A Reply from IAHI, The Owners’ Association of InterContinental Hotels Group, to Stanley Turkel’s Column

At 51 years old, IAHI is the hospitality industry’s most established franchisee association. The independent Atlanta-based organization today represents the interests of nearly 3,000 hotel owners located worldwide. Kemmons Wilson himself--one of the industry’s greatest pioneers and founder of the Holiday Inn brand--created IAHI in 1955.

Today, IAHI is the voice of its members to IHG. The association has numerous committees that work with IHG and that franchisees can turn to for guidance and best practices. IAHI also has one of the industry’s few political action committees—called INN-PAC. IAHI is quite active in lobbying Capitol Hill on issues affecting both the hotel and travel industries.

We agree that the power of the independent franchisee organization is very important to hotel owners. Hopefully, IAHI will be included in future columns and articles on Hotel-Online on the subject of franchisee associations.