Case Study on Intercontinental Hotels Group (ihg)

IHG (InterContinental Hotels Group) is a global organization with nine hotel brands including InterContinental® Hotels & Resorts, Hotel Indigo®, Crowne Plaza® Hotels & Resorts, Holiday Inn® Hotels and Resorts, Holiday Inn Express®, Staybridge Suites®, Candlewood Suites®, as well as two newest brands, EVEN™ Hotels and HUALUXE™ Hotels & Resorts. IHG also manages Priority Club® Rewards, the world's first and largest hotel loyalty program with over 65 million members worldwide (hospitalitynet, 2012).

As an international hotel giant, IHG has an effective risk management system and internal controls to help it to protect against known and emerging risks and to cope with the unexpected. IHG identifies three key elements of the long-term strategic goals, which are safety and security of guests, employees and other third parties; brand strength supported by operational excellence in risk management at all hotels and corporate locations; and maintenance and promotion of the reputation of the company. Since safety risk is a priority of all organizations, IHG put the hotel and people safety and security at the first place when it develops disciplines and controls of infrastructure risks. Generally, there are four types of infrastructure risks: health and safety at work; property fire protection; IT security; HR risks. The dominant infrastructure risk IHG faces is personal and property security. To enhance the management and visibility of corporate risks, IHG has set up a Global Risk Working Group. The Global Risk Management function focuses on driving action to support the strategy and protect assets by building a risk-aware and proactive culture and capability amongst management, focusing on risks prioritized by the business leaders (Business review, 2010). A strategic framework for hotel safety and security has been designed and describes the management activities that carried out by IHG to mitigate the risks. Groups of risks identified