InterContinental Hotels upbeat with business travellers back

Business travellers are on the move again and more are checking into top-of-the-market hotels such as the InterContinental in Park Lane.

The world's biggest hotels group, which has 640,000 rooms in more than 4,400 hotels, today beat City expectations with a 15% rise in operating profits to $83 million (£56 million).

Even more importantly, the key measure of success for hoteliers (revenues per room), while only rising 0.2% for the quarter, was up 4% in March and 5.2% in April.

Finance director Richard Solomons said the improvement was driven largely by business travellers, particularly in the Far East.

London also performed strongly with a 4.5% increase against a 3% decline across the UK as whole. The Park Lane hotel, which is still benefiting from the closure of rivals the Savoy and Four Seasons, had a 15% rise.

"We are much more optimistic than we were in February," said Solomons. "We expect the return of the business traveller to start benefiting our mid-market Holiday Inns soon."

Chief executive Andrew Cosslett said: "With this strengthening of our core business and the early signs of recovery in the market we are feeling confident about the outlook and our ability to grow market share."

Other global hoteliers are seeing a pick-up in demand as recovery tempts consumers back into travelling after the downturn caused many businesses to trim budgets.

InterContinental's American rivals were upbeat last month with Marriott International and Sheraton-owner Starwood Hotels & Resorts beating first quarter forecasts.