IHG Hotels & Resorts (IHG) today announced that it has signed a management agreement with AXA IM Alts to open Holiday Inn Kyoto Gojo by early 2025.
The opening heralds the return to the brand’s roots in Japan, with the first Holiday Inn opening more than 50 years ago in 1973. As Holiday Inn returns to Kyoto, it will be Japan’s eleventh hotel under the Holiday Inn brand family and IHG’s third hotel in the city, alongside ANA Crowne Plaza Kyoto and the recently opened Six Senses Kyoto.
The 183-guest room hotel will undergo a comprehensive refurbishment before rebranding as Holiday Inn Kyoto Gojo. Following its reopening, the hotel will feature dining and leisure amenities, including a lobby lounge & café bar, upmarket restaurant, multiple banquet rooms, traditional Japanese daiyokujo baths and gym.
In addition to adding a new open-lobby lounge & café bar and state-of-the-art gym and comprehensive refurbishment of all guest rooms, the renovation works will prioritise improving the energy efficiency of the building, including the installation of energy saving showers, guest room management systems and new facilities. The hotel’s energy conservation will be assessed to obtain BELS certification.
Well-located between Kyoto’s main station and numerous cultural heritage sites and traditional restaurants in downtown Kyoto, the hotel is ideally positioned for visitors arriving via the Shinkansen bullet train. Kyoto’s tourism market has displayed a robust recovery following Japan’s reopening of its borders post pandemic, with visitor numbers now surpassing 2019 levels.
Once open, the hotel will further strengthen its efforts to attract guests from Japan and abroad through the power of the world’s best known hotel brand, along with IHG’s global enterprise systems and award-winning loyalty program, IHG One Rewards, with more than 130 million members worldwide.
Abhijay Sandilya, Managing Director of Japan & Micronesia IHG Hotels & Resorts and CEO of IHG-ANA Hotels Group Japan G.K., said, “We are very pleased to announce our agreement with AXA IM Alts to open Holiday Inn Kyoto Gojo by early 2025, marking the return of the brand to its roots in Kyoto where it was first launched back in 1973. The historical, cultural and beautiful Kyoto is one of the world’s favourite destinations, so we are confident that Holiday Inn, as the world’s largest hotel brand family, along with IHG’s other Kyoto hotels, ANA Crowne Plaza Kyoto and Six Senses Kyoto, will provide a place for everyone to stay when visiting this unique and wonderful city. We look forward to building on this long-standing partnership with AXA IM Alts and hope to develop even more great hotels throughout Japan in the years to come.”
Laurent Jacquemin, Head of Asia-Pacific at AXA IM Alts, commented: “The fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic provided a compelling entry point for new acquisitions in certain pockets of the hospitality sector. The sector’s favorable structural drivers, including an increase in domestic and international tourism, underpin this highly attractive investment. We have long track record of successfully executing value-add projects as we look to reposition this sizeable, well-located hotel in a market characterized by a scarcity of foreign-brand hotels.
Japan is a key global market for AXA IM Alts, and one where we will look to pursue our deployment in 2024, targeting those sectors benefitting from supportive technological, urbanisation and demographic trends.”
IHG continues to embed its position as one of Japan’s leading international hotel companies, which currently has 59 open and pipeline hotels across the country and is experiencing its biggest period of growth on record in Japan.
