Holiday Inn 2013 Annual Report Download - page 32

Successful delivery of our strategy for high-quality
growth requires Disciplined Execution comprising:
• scale and efficiency ofoperations;
• investment in developing great talent and
technology platforms; and
• commitment to responsible business practices.
Scale and eciency ofoperations
With almost 687,000 rooms in nearly 100 countries and territories
around the world, we leverage our global and regional scale to
maximise the efficiency of our operations. We focus on driving
efficient operational processes and tightly managing our costs
proportionate with our revenues to:
• drive fee margin growth whilst investing in a strong platform
for the future;
• offer our owners access to market-leading capabilities and
practices that significantly contribute to hotel performance;
• maximise the investments we make in building preferred brands
(assisting us to increase guest satisfaction which we monitor
through Guest HeartBeat); and
• strengthen our revenue delivery system (to increase system
contribution to revenue).
We continue to drive process improvements and cost-saving initiatives:
• our strong multi-lingual guest support team in the Philippines
supports global reservations, sales and guest relations and
loyalty marketing;
• over 500 business support roles have been moved to our
Business Service Centre in Gurgaon, India, providing centralised
accounting services for IHG corporate offices and owned and
managed hotels; and
• the hardware for our central reservations system is managed
by IBM, one of our largest corporate clients.
Information on how we build and leverage scale can be found on page 24.
Crowne Plaza Beijing Lido, People’s Republic of China
Investment in developing great talent
and technology platforms
We support the delivery of the Winning Model by investing in the
development of talent and technology platforms that provide the
foundation for future growth.
Development of great talent
We know that our brands are brought to life by the people working in
our hotels who support the consistent delivery of the brand promise
in each hotel. Talent is key to our success, both at a corporate level
and in our hotels. We continue to invest in systems and tools to
develop our people in the corporate environment and at our hotels
and our People Tools (explained on page 22) are available for our
owners and hotels.
Our people strategy is detailed on pages 21 to 23.
Development of great technology platforms
Keeping up with new technologies and systems is also key to our
success. IHG invests across a range of technology platforms to
ensure that our revenue delivery and guest experience systems
are at the forefront of innovation in the industry. This includes
investment in reservation technology platforms, guest-facing
booking channels and new mobile services, as well as investment
to support the guest experience in hotels such as the development
of digital check-in services and the provision of wifi internet access.
Locally tailored systems
We also invest in technology to ensure our revenue delivery systems
and guest experiences are tailored to local markets based on
knowledge of local market conditions and travellers.
For example, in Greater China we have made various technology
investments to drive and convert demand and enhance the guest
experience, including being the first international hotel company
to launch a standalone Chinese website and being the only
international hotel company in Greater China working with Alipay,
the leading local payment system, to integrate their system into
our website. This is of critical importance in a market where credit
cards are not the primary means for paying online and enables
us to offer more prepaid products for our guests.
Information on our Effective channel management strategy can be
found on page 25.
Case study – Revenue Management
Our innovation in revenue management tools and techniques is
one particular example of our investment in technology platforms.
IHG Revenue Management is a core strategic tool that brings
together available rooms, rates and marketing at the hotel level,
co-ordinating with our channels to drive reservations to our hotels
at the right price.
This expertise is available to hotels through the IHG PERFORM
service, a pricing system designed to increase RevPAR and
deliver profitable rate recommendations to a hotel. The IHG
PERFORM system integrates local demand forecasting,
competitive data analysis and price sensitivity modelling to
recommend optimum pricing for each day based on the market
dynamics and guest type for each hotel. This enables IHG
hotels to effectively price their rooms within the context of
a highly dynamic competitive market environment.
30 IHG Annual Report and Form 20-F 2013
TARGETED PORTFOLIO DISCIPLINED EXECUTIONWINNING MODELDisciplined Execution