Internal and External Scan
Erika Beagle
STR 581
April 20, 2015
Christina Behling
INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL SCAN
Before brainstorming and coming up with ideas for a new strategic plan, any company must perform a SWOT analysis as a jumping off platform. The SWOT analysis will allow a company, in this case InterContinental Hotel Group, Plc (IHG), to give itself a thorough examination of the strengths and weaknesses within its walls and the chance to examine the different opportunities and threats it faces externally as they look into the future and continue to make and exceed consumer expectations.
Internal Scan
Strengths
IHG has a large portfolio of hotel brands that drives its business growth. From this growth they have become one of the largest hospitality companies in the world operating more than 5,000 hotels in nearly 100 counties across the globe (IHG Annual Report, 2014). Additionally, the IHG rewards program (formerly Priority Club Rewards) has given their nearly 77 million members a connected and established reward and redemption program allowing points to be earned and redeemed in all 9 brands that it operates (Company Profile: Intercontinental Hotels Group Plc, 2015).
A second strength IHG holds is their effective channel management strategy. IHG uses call centers and multi-lingual web and mobile sites to give customers the greatest and easiest reach to find rooms within all brands they manage. Web based bookings account for approximately $3.5 billion of revenue to all IHG hotels and its 12 global reservations centers took over 21 million phone calls and added $2 billion in revenue during 2013 (Company Profile: Intercontinental Hotels Group Plc, 2015).
Weaknesses
IHG identifies its own biggest weakness as the large amount of debt it carries. This long-term debt, nearly $1.3 million at the end of FY13, limits the financial flexibility the company has to plan, or even react to changes in business...