AT THE FRONT OF THE RACE

Challenges posed by the pandemic notwithstanding, IHG signed five hotels in South West Asia and opened three new properties in 2020

- VINITA BHATIA

The impact of the COVID-19 crisis on the travel and hospitality industry cannot be underestimated, but most hoteliers passionately believe it will recover with time. After all, people will always want to explore the world, relax or reconnect with friends and family. And it is this need that will help businesses in this space to turnaround.

Sudeep Jain, MD, South West Asia, InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) is confident that this economic recuperation will gradually unfold, although he is unsure how long it will take to put this crisis behind us. Understandably, the recovery will not be linear across markets and much depends on how vaccination programmes are managed across different countries, including India.

“Due to factors such as further easing of COVID-19 restrictions, pent-up demand, confidence in clean initiatives such as our IHG Way of Clean programme and of course, positive news around the vaccine, we have seen a gradual improvement in consumer confidence,” Jain stated. This resulted in an increased overall occupancy across IHG’s portfolio in December as compared to previous months; a trend that continued in January 2020 as well.

TURNING A CORNER

But not all was hunky-dory for the brand over the past 11 months. As COVID-19 posed unprecedented challenges to the travel industry, many IHG hotels around the world, including India, ran at the lowest occupancy levels ever seen, and others had to temporarily close their doors.