Tourism is the sphere of business which is rather old, but it became be very profitable for the last 20-40 years, as people began to be interested in other countries and want to see as much as possible during their lives. The spread of information adds to this desire. The increase of tourists leads to the increase of the tourism facilities which are irreplaceable, such as hotels, transportation, excursion specialists, and others. Hotels are the main facilities in the tourism business, as the first impression from the country is the place where the person is going to live. Intercontinental Hotel Group is one of the biggest and luxury hotels chains in the world.
Intercontinental Hotel Group springs from William Bass, who first organized the chain of breweries in the United Kingdom in 1777. The further life of breweries continued till 1989, and then, following the legislation which forbade such places, the breweries were reconstructed in the chain of hotels, which continued to develop and grew in the biggest chain of international hotels (Page 125). Intercontinental Hotel Group contains more than 3,500 hotels and about 535,000 hotel rooms in more than 100 countries of the world (Bardi 131).
Providing some research in the sphere of hotel chains, which can compete with Intercontinental Hotel Group, it was discovered that there is a lot of companies, which possess the same experience. The top hotel chains are Intercontinental Hotel Group, Starwood Hotels, and Resorts, Marriot International, Accor, Hilton Group PLC, Le Meridien Hotels and Resorts (Pasiuk 4; Cunill 184). These companies possess a great number of hotels in different countries of the world and are the most influential in the tourism sphere, so it is impossible to avoid the competition.
The current crisis in the world could not avoid tourism as one of the most developed spheres of business. Moreover, the laying-offs in some companies led to the reduction of the traveling for business, which reduced the inco9mes of all hotel companies. The change in the Intercontinental Hotel Group income became obvious on August 18, 2009, when the corporation bounced back 100 points, according to the information in the Financial Times Stock Exchange Index (Elder par. 1).
The corporation makes its offers according to the reasons and the ways out of the situation. The company provided the analysis of the situation and noted that the increase in the activities in June was the result of holidaymakers, and the next step forward is marked for September, when the “corporate customers renegotiate rates” (Elder par. 4). The situation beat the positions of the company a little, but it is impossible to bowl down such a huge corporation as Intercontinental Hotel Group. The hotel chain is not a simple hotel that can be beaten by such a crisis. The hotel chain is a structure that can sustain even in such difficult times.
So, Intercontinental Hotel Group is a chain of hotels that obtains the top position among other corporations in the hotel business. The recent changes can just reduce the incomes of the company and lower its positions in the international arena, but even the crisis cannot eliminate such developed corporations from the tourism international map. The changes, which occurred in the last month, are temporal and the corporation analytics predicts that September is going to be the month, when the company is going to raise its positions, and strengthen them in the international arena.
Works Cited
Bardi, James A. Hotel front office management. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 2006.
Cunill, Onofre Martorell. The growth strategies of hotel chains: best business practices by leading companies. Oxford: Routledge, 2006.
Elder, Bryce. “IHG profits on ‘turning point’.” Financial Times. 2009.
Page, Stephen. Tourism Management: Managing for Change. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann, 2009.
Pasiuk, Laurie. Vault Guide to Hospitality & Tourism Industry Employers. New York: Vault Inc., 2005.