InterContinental to sell 10 more hotels

SYDNEY - InterContinental Hotels Group is selling a further 10 hotels in Australia, New Zealand and Fiji, pressing on with its strategy to exit hotel ownership.

The group said the 10 properties being sold included the InterContinental Wellington, three Crowne Plazas and five Holiday Inns in Australia and a Holiday Inn in Fiji.

InterContinental won't disclose the value of the hotels because they may all be acquired by a single purchaser, spokesman Leslie McGibbon said.

England-based InterContinental, which has half a million hotel rooms, is shedding properties as it models itself on US companies such as Marriott International that manage and franchise hotels on behalf of others.

InterContinental has sold or agreed to sell 121 hotels for 1.75 billion pounds ($4.63 billion) since it was spun off from Six Continents in 2003.

InterContinental agreed last month to sell 73 UK hotels to a group led by Lehman Brothers Holdings for 1 billion pounds, and still has 16 hotels worth 360 million on the market.

Shares of the UK hotelier rose 4.5 pence, or 0.7 per cent, to 629.5 pence in London. The stock has risen 25 per cent in the past year.

The Australian properties may draw interest from Thakral Holdings Group, the owner of Melbourne's Hilton Hotel and eight others valued at a total A$500 million along the country's east coast.

Thakral chief executive John Hudson said last month that the company may bid for the properties.

 

The number of international tourists to Australia may increase 6 per cent this year, and that, coupled with domestic demand, may push up room prices in cities such as Sydney by 10 per cent in 2005, Hudson said.

The number of overseas visitors to Australia rose 4.8 per cent to 477,100 in January from December, the Australian Bureau of Statistics said last month.

InterContinental owns, leases, manages or franchises 149 hotels in the Asia Pacific region. The group said it had received around A$287 million in cash from Strategic Hotel Capital for its 85 per cent interests in the InterContinental Chicago and the InterContinental Miami.

The company has a market value of 3.8 billion.

BLOOMBERG, REUTERS