IHG Group buys Ruby Hotels for €110.5m – plans expansion
InterContinental Hotels Group continues its acquisition spree: it has bought Ruby Hotels from the Ruby Group for €110.5 million as it seeks further international expansion on the back of strong profit growth.
Ruby has become the 20th brand for the IHG group, which also owns Holiday Inn. IHG said it intends to grow the Ruby brand “substantially further”, also expanding into the US this year and Asia at a later stage.
Ruby currently has 20 hotels in Europe’s main cities, including three in London, and a pipeline of ten further hotels set to open in the next three years in cities including Edinburgh, Rome and Stockholm.
“This acquisition demonstrates our focus on building our presence in large, attractive industry segments and using our experience of integrating and growing brands and hotel portfolios,” said IHG chief executive Elie Maalouf. “The urban micro space is a franchise-friendly model with attractive owner economics, and we see excellent opportunities to not only expand Ruby’s strong European base but also rapidly take this exciting brand to the Americas and across Asia, as we have successfully done with previous brand acquisitions.”
Ruby, described as “lean luxury”, is a premium urban lifestyle brand for modern travellers in must-visit city destinations. It provides hotel owners with space-efficient designs and an attractive, flexible concept as well as a high degree of operational standardisation and automation, including self-service kiosks for speedy check-in.
IHG also announced that operating profits grew by 10% to $1.12 billion in 2024, as it benefited from more hotel openings.
Joining forces with IHG allows Ruby hotels to draw on a powerful enterprise platform of distribution and technology systems, as well as one of the world’s biggest and most powerful hotel loyalty programmes, IHG One Rewards. IHG expects the urban micro sub-segment to continue experiencing strong demand from travellers around the world, and this in turn would support ongoing rooms supply growth at higher rates than the global hotel industry.
“We have carefully selected IHG as the right partner to take the Ruby brand and our international expansion to the next level,” said Michael Struck, founder & CEO, The Ruby Group. “IHG’s distribution powerhouse, the fact that Ruby perfectly complements IHG’s portfolio, combining the global reach and resources of IHG with the efficiency advantages of our operational and construction model, will drive superior returns for our investors and real-estate partners alike.”
IHG is targeting the Ruby brand to grow to more than 120 hotels over the next 10 years and accelerate to more than 250 over 20 years across owners globally. The integration of all 20 currently open Ruby hotels into IHG’s system is expected to commence later in 2025 and be completed by 31 March 2026.
