Half a million rooms to choose from

Most hotel-group bosses like to be at the opening of each new property in their chain. Some claim to have slept in all of their establishments or even to have spent a night in every room. Not Andrew Cosslett. His company is the biggest hotel group in the world. It has 572,000 rooms in more than 3,800 properties and is opening a new hotel every day of the year.

Cosslett, the 52-year-old chief executive of InterContinental Hotels, has not yet visited all of his existing estate. ‘I couldn’t even keep up with the ones we’re opening,’ he admits. And the task will get harder. ‘We’re opening one a day and signing up two for the pipeline.’ There are now 1,400 hotels in that pipeline, being planned and built.

He does a mental sum and qualifies his boast — but not to downgrade the statistics. ‘We’re not just opening a hotel a day somewhere round the world, we’re opening a Holiday Inn a day, never mind the other brands.’ Those other brands include InterContinental and Crowne Plaza. They may sound as American as the Major League baseball he sponsors, but they are now as British as the Manchester-born Cosslett.

Holiday Inn is the top brand in China, targeting domestic customers in inland centres as well as foreign visitors. Just as the hotel chain’s US development followed the building of freeways, Cosslett is rolling out the brand as China’s road network grows. He has 70 hotels open there now and a target of 125 by next year. He has signed up 16 new deals so far this year, of which the most exciting is a 66-storey development in Nanjing. At 1,400 feet, it will be the world’s tallest hotel when it opens next year.