InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG), the world's largest hotel company by number of rooms, has announced the appointment of Karin Sheppard to the position of vice president commercial for Middle East and Africa (MEA). Karin replaces Tom Rowntree who has moved back to the IHG head office in the UK , taking the position of vice president brand management for Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA).
Based in Dubai, Karin is responsible for implementing and integrating all sales, marketing, and revenue functions across the portfolio of hotel brands in the region encompassing InterContinental, Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn Express and Staybridge Suites.
Leading key developments, she is responsible for planning and overseeing regional and local commercial strategies in addition to increasing brand awareness and hotel performance within the region.
Karin is by no means new to IHG, having first joined in 2001 as area director of sales and marketing in Sydney, Australia. Over the course of her 10 years with the company, she moved to the New Zealand and South Pacific headquarters, heading up brand management for the region, and later the broader regional sales and marketing team.
Prior to moving to the Middle East, Karin worked in the UK as vice president brand development and delivery for EMEA. In this role, she focused on the launch of the Indigo and Staybridge Suites brands in EMEA and was instrumental in the implementation and roll out across EMEA of the hotel industry's largest rebranding exercise, the Holiday Inn global relaunch.
Commenting on the appointment, John Bamsey, chief operating officer MEA said: "In joining the Middle East and Africa team, Karin brings with her a wealth of experience in the commercial, brand and marketing fields. Her career with IHG has taken her around the world and I have no doubt that the knowledge and experience she has accumulated over the last ten years will add enormous value here within the region."
In other senior management changes, IHG announced the appointment of Natalie Nasser as commercial director Near East & Africa and Haitham Mattar as director of operations support & franchising MEA
Reporting to the vice president commercial for MEA, Natalie will head up the commercial function for Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Africa, overseeing the hotel sales, marketing and revenue teams to ensure the business can achieve its financial goals.
Haitham's role will be to support John Bamsey, chief operating officer MEA in developing best practice systems, processes and ways of working throughout the managed and franchised estate across MEA. He will work closely with his peers in Europe and UK & Ireland to ensure consistency throughout EMEA.
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InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) [LON:IHG, NYSE:IHG (ADRs)] is the world's largest hotel group by number of rooms. IHG franchises, leases, manages or owns, through various subsidiaries, over 4,400 hotels and more than 640,000 guest rooms in 100 countries and territories around the world. The Group owns a portfolio of well recognised and respected hotel brands including InterContinental Hotels & Resorts, Hotel Indigo, Crowne Plaza Hotels & Resorts, Holiday Inn Hotels and Resorts, Holiday Inn Express, Staybridge Suites and Candlewood Suites and also manages the world's largest hotel loyalty programme, Priority Club Rewards with 56 million members worldwide.
IHG has almost 1,300 hotels in its development pipeline, which is expected to create 160,000 jobs worldwide over the next few years.
InterContinental Hotels Group PLC is the Group's holding company and is incorporated in Great Britain and registered in England and Wales.
IHG offers information and online reservations for all its hotel brands at www.ihg.com and information for the Priority Club Rewards programme at www.priorityclub.com. For our latest news visit www.ihg.com/media, Twitter www.twitter.com/ihgplc or YouTube www.youtube.com/ihgplc.
Media enquiries: Hala Saqqa at hala.saqqa@hillandknowlton.com
© Press Release 2011
