InterContinental Hotels Group, the owner of Crowne Plaza and Holiday Inn, is launching a $500mn share buyback and increasing its interim dividend to reward shareholders as leisure and business travel demand recovers to near pre-pandemic levels.

The group, which owns 17 brands and has more than 6,000 hotels in its portfolio, said on Tuesday that revenue per available room (revpar), the industry’s chosen metric, was down just 10.5 per cent in the six months to June 30 compared with the same period in 2019.

“The Americas is strong into the recovery, Europe is entering into the recovery very aggressively over summer, and now borders in Asia are opening up and China will come too, which gives us confidence that we’ll see an extended recovery,” said Keith Barr, IHG’s chief executive.