A five-star development: IHG is set to take over several Penta Hotels and rebrand them under its Holiday Inn, voco, and Garner brands by early 2027. This development follows the conclusion of long-term franchise agreements with investment firms Ogilvy Management and Ironstone Group, who have acquired a portfolio of 11 hotels in Germany, Belgium, and France. This amounts to over 1,800 rooms that will be offered in strategic locations for business travellers, particularly near Paris CDG and Brussels airports.
Thanks to this partnership, IHG will expand its offering near the Parisian hub, which until now was limited to a Holiday Inn and a Holiday Inn Express. Shortly, the British group will give a new direction to a hotel with 186 rooms with a lifestyle focus. opened in 2016The Penta Hotel, close to Brussels Airport, has 87 rooms and a more intimate meeting room of 25 m². It will be added to the Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn and Holiday Inn Express hotels already present.
It is worth noting that the Penta brand has a long airport history, launched in 1971 on the initiative of a joint venture between five airlines: Lufthansa, Swissair, Alitalia, as well as BOAC and BEA, before the latter two merged to form the current British Airways. Before the New World Hospitality group, also owners of the luxury Rosewood hotels, relaunched the brand in the mid-2000s, before Penta Hotels was taken over in 2020 by Aroundtown and Capital Bay, then saw a large part of its establishments bought by Ogilvy Management and Ironstone Group.
Among these, three hotels in Belgium will come under the IHG umbrella, one in the centre of Brussels, with a 200-bedroom business hotel and 9 meeting rooms located on Chaussée de Charleroi, and the others in Liège and Leuven. The new mid-range brand Garner will benefit from this agreement to enter the country while continuing its expansion in Germany. While IHG already offers around fifty Garner hotels there as part of its strategic partnership with the Novum Hospitality group, new locations are expected with the conversion of certain Penta Hotels.
More broadly, six hotels in Germany are covered by this franchise agreement, notably those in Leipzig, Bremen, and Wiesbaden. We are delighted to partner with Ironstone Group and Ogilvy Management to welcome 11 high-quality hotels to our portfolio., said Karin Sheppard, IHG Hotels & Resorts’ managing director for Europe. They are all located in prime city centre and key airport locations ".
