Victories Are All Relative Now for Hotel Giant IHG

The owner of brands like Holiday Inn and Crowne Plaza showed signs in the third quarter that the worst of the coronavirus pandemic’s financial fallout is over. But there is still plenty of uncertainty — and portfolio setbacks — ahead in the road to a full recovery for IHG. The hotel giant reported on Friday revenue-per-available room, the hotel industry’s key performance metric, was down more than 53 percent from last year across its global portfolio for the third quarter. While that decline is certainly hefty, it is actually a marked improvement from the 75 percent drop seen last quarter. “We have continued to outperform the overall industry driven by our weighting and market-leading position in the mainstream segment, by our distribution predominantly in non-urban and drive-to locations, and by our skew toward transient and leisure demand as opposed to group busin