Full-year systemwide room revenue generated by business transient travel at IHG Hotels & Resorts increased 2 per cent year on year in 2025, executives said during an earnings call on Tuesday (17 February). Revenue per available room (RevPAR) from group bookings also rose 1 per cent compared to the previous year, while revenue from leisure travel remained flat.
IHG hotels in the Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia (EMEAA) saw the biggest year-on-year uptick in RevPAR across both business transient (up 5 per cent) and group travel (up 4 per cent). In the Americas – where the US represents 44 per cent of IHG’s system size – business transient RevPAR increased 2 per cent year on year, but RevPAR attached to groups fell 1 per cent despite a 2 per cent hike in the average daily rates.
IHG chief financial officer Michael Glover said the systemwide results were “pleasing to see in a turbulent year, particularly across the US,” with growth likely to continue into 2026.
“As we started 2026, we saw really solid business demand coming in,” Glover said, even as demand in the US was “affected” by storms and cold weather. “Overall, [demand] is still positive moving forward.”
“Looking at groups, what we see right now on the books is almost double digits up year over year. It looks like groups are going to be strong,” Glover added.
The company, which owns brands such as Holiday Inn, Crowne Plaza, InterContinental and the recently acquired Ruby Hotels, saw its global average daily rate (ADR) for the year increase by 0.8 per cent compared to 2024, while RevPAR increased 1.5 per cent year on year and occupancy rose 0.5 percentage points.
In EMEAA, RevPAR for 2025 grew 4.6 per cent, with occupancy up 1.6 percentage points and average daily rate also increasing 2.4 per cent. This included a 1.1 per cent increase in RevPAR in the UK, and a 4.2 per cent RevPAR uptick in Continental Europe.
IHG reported $5.19 billion (£3.8 billion) in total revenue for the year, up 5 per cent from 2024, while operating profits rose 15 per cent to $1.2 billion (£880 million).
IHG's Q4 metrics
IHG’s systemwide fourth-quarter RevPAR increased 1.6 per cent year on year, while ADR increased 1.1 per cent. Systemwide occupancy increased 0.3 percentage points.
Fourth-quarter EMEAA RevPAR increased 7.1 per cent, with occupancy up 2.7 percentage points and average daily rate up 3.3 per cent.
IHG opened 443 hotels in 2025 and added another 694 into its pipeline, including its “highest ever” hotel openings and signings in Greater China. The company’s global pipeline, as of 31 December, increased 4 per cent year on year to 339,500 rooms.
New collection brand
The company on Tuesday also launched ‘Noted Collection’ – a new collection brand for independent hotels the premium hotel category. IHG CEO Elie Maalouf said the collection, which was first announced in October, “fills a key space in our brand ladder” and builds on the success of its Vignette Collection for the luxury and lifestyle category, which launched in 2021.
IHG expects Noted Collection to “scale rapidly” and reach more than 150 hotels globally within the next 10 years. Maalouf said the company is already in talks with “multiple” owners, with an initial focus on the EMEAA region “where there is a significant proportion of high-quality hotels with strong individual brand equity”.
AI investments
Maalouf dedicated significant time during Tuesday’s call outlining IHG’s AI strategy, which he insisted is “broad and enterprise-wide”, covering guest acquisition, commercial optimisation and cost efficiencies. This includes AI-powered cloud-based systems for revenue management, guest reservation and property management systems; a new content platform; an AI trip planner and a new unified loyalty and CRM platform powered by Salesforce.
“With the new content platform, which will be launched at scale this year, we’ll be able to take all [our] digital information and put it in the right channel at the right time to strengthen the digital hooks needed for our hotels to be recommended by AI agents. This matters as travel search patterns evolve,” Maalouf said.
The company also plans to roll out “more engaging types of content” such as video, 360 images, virtual tours, automated language translation and floor plans, which Maalouf said will enable “a more conversational search experience on IHG’s owned websites and apps”. The company will begin testing these capabilities with customers “later this year”.
Meanwhile, the new CRM and loyalty platform will “unify all customer data in a cloud-based system, which gives a seamless view of our loyalty members – and all their experiences – to [allow us to] provide more personalised experiences and more relevant promotions, better benefits”, Maalouf said.
When asked during the call about AI's potential disruption, Maalouf replied:
“Yes, there is disruption, but there are two things that are fundamentally not changing: There will always be a guest that will want to travel for business or leisure and they want to go to a destination that has a ‘live’, real experience. The more that people experience the virtual, the more they favour live experiences… everything in between – the distribution, how you book, how you share, how you search – that is changing. We don’t see this as disruption; we see this as an opportunity for us. And we feel were in a strong position to capitalise on these opportunities because of the huge stride we’ve made in recent years to modernise our tech stack.”