InterContinental to open 12 new hotels in Saudi Arabia by 2022

Global hotel chain InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) will double the number of hotel rooms in Saudi Arabia as it plans to open 12 new hotels over the next three years, a senior company executive told Argaam in an exclusive.

“We operate 33 hotels currently with nearly 13,000 rooms. I think we will double the number of rooms in the next three years as all these hotels are quite large,” Pascal Gauvin, Managing Director of India, Middle East and Africa at IHG, said at the Arabian Travel Market on Sunday.

The global hotel chain is looking at opportunities in new mega cities such as NEOM, AlUla, Amaala, Red Sea and is in talks with the Saudi government and the Public Investment Fund, the Kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund.

“We are in contact with all the developers and the government just to ensure that our brands are presented. We have a lot of exchange of possibilities for our brand and definitely in the near future we will see some of the results of all this talks that we are having,” he added.

IHG is set to launch its “voco” brand in the Kingdom following the first launch in Dubai.

“Voco Al Khobar will open in the last quarter of 2019,” he added.

Gauvin maintains a positive outlook on the Kingdom tourism sector, referring to the Vision 2030.

“We are very positive about Saudi Arabia. It has been always our primary market and this is where we have always operated our largest number of hotels and rooms. One of the pillars of Vision 2030 is the tourism and travel. So, travel and tourism is us. We see a lot of optimism and it is visible.”

IHG, which has 5,300 hotels globally, has 84 hotels in the Middle East.

Write to Parag Deulgaonkar at parag.d@argaamplus.com