InterContinental Hotels Group, the world’s largest hotel operator, saw revenue rise by 5% last year to $21.2 billion.
This came as capacity increased by 676,000 rooms or 2.7% on 2011 through 226 new hotels openings, the signing of 365 hotels and a pipeline of 1,053 hotels.
Global revenue per available room rose by 5.2% with the US leading the growth.
Despite challenging economic conditions across Europe, RevPAR (a measure of profitability) grew by 2.5% in the UK and by 5.4% in Germany, where the industry benefited from a busy trade fair schedule, the company said.
Chief executive Richard Solomans said: “2012 was another year of significant progress for IHG with our preferred brands driving RevPAR up 5.2%, led by the US up 6.3%.
“Together with 2.7% net rooms growth, which is fuelled increasingly by our expansion in developing markets, this drove up fee revenues by an impressive 6.8%.
“This growing scale allowed us to reinvest in the business while achieving better than anticipated margin progression.
“The financing environment remained tough through 2012 in many of our key markets, but we still signed on average one hotel a day into our pipeline.
“This reflects the excellent relationship we enjoy with our owners and further strengthens our foundation for high quality growth.
“We extended our portfolio of preferred brands, launching in the first quarter of 2012 the innovative HUALUXE Hotels & Resorts and EVEN Hotels.”
He added: “IHG’s proven strategy and resilient business model position us for further good performance in 2013, despite the challenging economic environment.”
IHG said the disposal process for InterContinental London Park Lane has commenced and continues for InterContinental New York Barclay.