Keith Barr, CEO of InterContinental Hotel Group, says he is expecting an 'incredible' summer for his business as pandemic conditions have normalized and people are ready to travel. 

Closing Bell

InterContinental Hotels Group CEO Preparing for 'Amazing' Summer of Travel

Welcome back to closing bell on cheddar news. Everyone with summer travel season getting underway. The hospitality sector is in a sweet spot. Just score big intercontinental hotels group, the parent company of brands like Holiday Inn and Crowne Plaza looking to maintain some recent momentum of its own recently opening its 6000 hotel and the company's Ceo keith Barr, just ringing the closing bell here at the new york stock exchange, joining me from the floor of the new york stock exchange keith, thanks so much for coming on as so with many people ready to act on pent up demand for summer travel. How high are your expectations for the summer season? It is going to be an amazing summer season because travel is back and we really shouldn't be surprised by that when you understand that the pandemic really suppressed travel for an extended period of time and people shifted over to renovating their homes and buying new TVs but now that things that have normalized demand has come back to services and it's come back to travel. So we're seeing an incredible summer in front of us here in the US with leisure travel, but business travelers coming back groups, meetings, and events, conventions conferences, that's not spreading into europe Middle east into Asia and the only really challenge globally is china due to the lockdown there absolutely 6000 hotels now keith that is a broad portfolio, everything from the super high end like the region brand at two more budget friendly hotels as well like Holiday Inn as I referenced earlier and somewhat notably your stock only down 11% from its recent high in this past year. So certainly holding up better than some of the other categories that we've seen. How are you ensuring a mid massive labor shortages across industries, but certainly in leisure and hospitality that the quality of service is maintained throughout these busy summer months. You know, we are so fortunate to have an incredible portfolio brands as you mentioned, ranging from top end of luxury like six senses and region all the way to mainstream and what we're focusing on is making sure we're an incredible place to work connecting with our colleagues globally. They want to work for great brands and the hospitality industry is one in 10 jobs globally. And so it's an incredible industry. You can come in at the entry level, work your way up from the front desk to a general manager. I started out basically cooking in restaurants and today I'm a global ceo so it's an amazing industry but we're focusing on supporting our hotels through training and leveraging new technologies to ensure our hotels are staffed appropriately and delivering great experiences interesting. Now you do have chains on both the high end and the more budget friendly and keith as we've been discussing, are you finding that consumers are acting differently? For instance, is the affluent consumer perhaps holding up better with more demand at brands like Regent intercontinental then for instance, some of the more budget friendly options, like a Holiday Inn. What we've seen actually is our brand portfolio has performed well across all the different segments, interestingly, during the depth of the pandemic, the Holiday Inn Express is of the world perform some of the best, but now that people are traveling again, you're seeing that people want to get out and experience are hotels, there is truthfully though very limited price sensitivity at the top end, the luxury travel space. Right now prices continue to go up because that segment, People want to go, want to have those experiences, want to go to an amazing six senses resort but also people are going to local soccer tournaments with their kids at a Holiday Inn Express, so we're seeing great demand, average rates going up and that should continue especially as business travel continues to come back. How much higher is the average rate at this time of the year keith and what we saw a year ago, it's up pretty significantly and it varies of course by city by segment, but we're seeing great, great pricing power because our brands have so much affinity to consumers truthfully in the luxury resort destination space rates are up significantly and all of the sun belt here in the United States rates are up. Some of the urban centers haven't quite happened as much, but I'm here with my team in new york and rates are just incredibly robust right now, the city is humming, there are conferences on, there are families going to show, so rates will continue to move up across the travel space, and how much do you anticipate keith rates will be rising throughout the rest of the year. I know significant increases already for the luxury travel space so far this year. But are we talking about a double digit increase in rates for most of your hotels before the end of the year? I think at an industry level you're gonna see single digit increases in rates in the United States, with certain markets being double digit because again, the strength of the demand there too. So overall, strong average rate growth across the board, but particularly strong in resorts and destinations. All right, we got to leave it there. Keep bars, ceo of intercontinental hotels group that stock rising today and actually up in the after hours as well. Q Thank you.