Survey of Hotel Owners Shows Optimism: IAHI members want to increase involvement in owners group

IAHI, The Owners' Association for InterContinental Hotel Group (IHG)-brand hotels worldwide, today announced results of its annual 2011 Membership Survey. Key findings reveal owners' optimism that their hotels are performing better than last year. Notably, a majority of respondents are very satisfied or satisfied with early results of the recently completed Holiday Inn re-launch, the most ambitious and wide-ranging hotel industry initiative ever. The Holiday Inn re-launch was greatly influenced by IAHI member participation.

Each year, IAHI surveys its members, who represent more than 3,100 IHG hotels worldwide, to gain better understanding of their perspectives on satisfaction with association performance; priorities for association action or support; current economic environment and hotel performance; key IAHI strategic issues, and member involvement with the association.

Incoming IAHI chairman, Glenn Squires of Pacrim Hospitality Services, noted, "It is gratifying that a significant portion of IAHI members want to increase their personal level of involvement with the association, and that more owners are satisfied with IAHI support (up to 79% this year from 64% the previous year)."

Highlights of additional findings from this year's survey include:

• Having worked through economic and lending challenges, owners are more focused on existing asset and portfolio growth in 2011 than on debt service, which they indicated was their primary focus in last year's survey.
• Members are excited about 2011 'Celebrate Service' with more planning to participate this year than last. Celebrate Service was inaugurated in 2010 as a weeklong initiative to recognize IHG team members around the world for their hard work.
• Members are enthusiastic about employing green practices to manage their carbon footprint by implementing the IAHI-supported 'Green Engage' 2.0 resource offered by IHG. Green Engage, endorsed by LEED, is a comprehensive online sustainability system that provides green solutions and automatically generates reports and energy benchmark so that hotels can better monitor and compare their performance.
• Although 80% of owners are challenged with revenue growth, they believe financial performance will return to pre-recession levels in the next two years; nearly half of respondents are well on their way to recovery. (Note that the survey was distributed and completed prior to the U.S. downgrade by S&P and resulting market turbulence.)

Squires added that survey results would be extremely useful as he and the IAHI Board identify strategic initiatives for development in 2012. In past years, member feedback has contributed to IAHI's support of and participation in development of such pivotal industry programs as InnSupply, the proprietary procurement portal, and People Tools, IHG's program to recruit, retain and develop employees.

For an overview of 2011 key survey results and charts, click here.