InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) has acquired from Ruby SARL the Ruby premium urban lifestyle hotel brand and related intellectual property for initial purchase consideration of 110.5 million euros (US$115.6 million).
The Ruby brand currently operates 20 hotels (3,483 rooms) in major cities across Europe and has another 10 pipeline hotels (2,235 rooms). It targets modern travellers and properties are present in must-visit city destinations. Hotel owners are provided with space-efficient designs and an attractive, flexible concept that IHG expects to rapidly expand globally.
Ruby will be IHG’s 20th brand.
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. 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.
Elie Maalouf, chief executive officer, IHG Hotels & Resorts, said:
“We are delighted with the acquisition of Ruby, which further enriches our portfolio with an exciting, distinct and high-quality offer for both guests and owners in popular city destinations. 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. 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.”
Michael Struck, founder and CEO of The Ruby Group, added:
“We have carefully selected IHG as the right partner to take the Ruby brand and our international expansion to the next level. IHG’s distribution powerhouse, the fact that Ruby perfectly complements IHG’s portfolio, and its proven track record of successfully preserving identity and culture when integrating brands gives us great confidence as we embark on this next chapter together. 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. Also, the timing could not be better. Our unique solutions for efficient adaptive re-use of office space are in high demand, positioning us for strong growth.”
The integration of all 20 currently open Ruby hotels into IHG’s system is expected to commence later in 2025 and be completed by March 31, 2026. This would increase IHG’s global system size by approximately 0.3 per cent.
The current pipeline of 10 hotels when open would add approximately 0.2 per cent to IHG’s system.
