InterContinental Hotels reported a strong half year with a 9% rise in operating profits to $337 million.
The group, which is working with Amadeus to develop the industry’s first cloud-based guest reservation system, reported 50% growth in downloads of its mobile app and 48% growth in mobile revenue to more than $1 billion on an annualised basis.
Overall revenue for the half year to June 30 edged up by 1% to $915 million over the first six months of 2014.
Revenue per available room (revPar) was up by 5.1% with growth reported from across all regions.
The company finalised a programme of property sales by agreeing to sell the InterContinental Hong Kong for $938 million.
A total of 28,000 rooms were added to the network worldwide to give a total of 724,000 rooms.
Chief executive, Richard Solomons, said: “We continued to make strong progress against our winning strategy in the first half, strengthening our brands, loyalty programme and owner proposition.
“We delivered our best first half for signings since 2008, underlying fee revenue growth of 9%, and underlying profit growth of 10%, giving us the confidence to increase the interim dividend by 10%.
“Our preferred brands demonstrated their continued momentum as we signed the highest number of Holiday Inn rooms ever in the first half, including the two largest properties for the brand, and strengthened our leadership position in the fast growing boutique segment.
“Alongside this we continue to make great progress delivering against our technology objectives, introducing a number of new digital initiatives that have helped drive almost 50% growth in mobile revenue.
“The completion of the sale of InterContinental Paris – Le Grand for €330 million, and agreement to sell InterContinental Hong Kong for $938 million, marks the successful finalisation of our major owned asset disposal programme, which has realised gross proceeds of $8 bilion.
“Looking forward, based on current trading trends, we remain confident in the outlook for the rest of the year.”