Intercontinental Hotels Group Puts 20 Hotels Up for Sale

WINDSOR, ENGLAND-Locally based InterContinental Hotels Group PLC has added another 20 hotels to its disposition pipeline as it continues to shed assets in favor of its management and franchise businesses. The hotels, mostly in the US, have a book value of $930 million (£500 million).The latest tranche of hotels earmarked for disposal include the InterContinental hotels in Miami and Chicago as well as other InterContinentals and hotels under the Crowne Plaza and Holiday Inn brands. The company says the hotels will be sold only if satisfactory pricing can be achieved, and that the plan is to retain the management contract for as many of the properties as possible.Earlier this year, IHG placed another, mostly international portfolio of hotels on the market with a book value of $238 million (£129 million). Two of the hotels in that portfolio — the Holiday Inn, Gatwick, UK and the Holiday Inn, Adelaide, Australia — have sold — for upward of $31.6 million (£17 million). As part of its new strategy, IHG has sold a total of 28 hotels (4,146 rooms) generating proceeds of more than $610.8 million (£320 million), with aggregate proceeds above net book value. All told, the total net book value of hotels sold or being actively marketed by InterContinental totals nearly $1.9 billion (£1 billion). An update on progress, potential further disposals and return of capital to shareholders will be provided at IHG’s interim results presentation on September 9, 2004.