InterContinental Hotels Is Taking Kimpton Global

Luxury Travel News

The Skift New Luxury column is our weekly column focused on the business of selling luxury travel, the people and companies creating and selling experiences, emerging trends, and the changing consumer habits around the sector.

InterContinental Hotels Group has taken its sweet time rolling out the Kimpton brand. It bought the company at the end of 2014 when it had 62 hotels in its portfolio. Three and a half years later it has only added five more.

Bill Kimpton was a pioneer of the boutique hotel model in the U.S., so it's surprising that the brand has not really crossed the Atlantic or Pacific. There is one hotel in the Cayman Islands, one in Amsterdam — that's it for the world outside North America, for now.

In the coming years this is all about to change. Last year IHG signed deals for hotels in Greater China and Bali, and last week it signed a deal to rebrand a number of luxury hotels in the UK, some of which are likely to come under the Kimpton brand.

What's also interesting is that IHG considers Kimpton part of its luxury portfolio, alongside InterContinental and the newly acquired Regent.

"We bought Kimpton because we see that having very strong brand proposition, number one positioning in the U.S. and an opportunity to grow it to a very meaningful business around the world, which we're now demonstrating out. And it will be a global brand of scale," Paul Edgecliffe-Johnson, IHG's chief financial officer, said on an earnings call last week.

Under relatively new CEO Keith Barr, IHG is making a real push in the luxury sector with Kimpton destined to play a big part.

For feedback or news tips, reach out via email at pw@skift.com or tweet me @paddywhyte.

— Patrick Whyte, Europe Editor

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