IHG Hotels & Resorts has promoted Nitika Bajaj to the position of Senior Manager – Talent Management EMEAA, with effect from January 2026. The appointment marks a significant step up for a hospitality HR professional who has built the core of her career within the IHG ecosystem, expanding her remit from a South Asia-focused role to one that spans Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Africa.
Bajaj brings more than 15 years of HR experience in luxury and upper-upscale hospitality, with a career shaped by both operational depth and progressive responsibility. She joined IHG in December 2021 as Human Resources Manager for South Asia, a role she held for over four years. In that capacity, she oversaw HR functions across multiple properties, managing both pre-opening phases and ongoing operations, with a focus on employee engagement and organisational effectiveness.
Her earlier time within the broader IHG family was spent across two senior positions: Portfolio Director of Human Resources at Holiday Inn Express, where she managed HR across a cluster of properties, followed by Director of Human Resources at Crowne Plaza Today in Gurgaon. Across these roles, she developed a thorough command of IHG’s brand standards, culture and people frameworks – grounding that now serves her well in a regional strategic function.
Before joining IHG, Bajaj spent nearly five years at Taj Hotels Resorts and Palaces, one of India’s most storied luxury hospitality groups. She held roles in training, development and sales across several landmark properties – Rambagh Palace in Jaipur, Taj Lake Palace in Udaipur, and Taj Palace and Taj Mahal in Delhi – before serving as Learning & Development Manager at Taj Falaknuma Palace in Hyderabad. The experience instilled a strong foundation in luxury service culture and human capital development at the highest tier of Indian hospitality.
Her academic credentials reinforce the professional trajectory. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Hospitality Management from IHM Gwalior and a Postgraduate Certification in Human Resource Management from XLRI Jamshedpur, one of India’s foremost institutions for management education.
In her new role, Bajaj takes on talent strategy responsibilities across IHG’s EMEAA region – a vast and commercially significant territory that the group has structured across three business units: Europe, IMEA and EAPAC. The region delivered RevPAR growth of 4.6 per cent in 2025, outpacing IHG’s other major markets, as the group reached a global portfolio of 6,963 hotels. With a pipeline of nearly 2,300 hotels worldwide and an aggressive expansion agenda that includes new brand launches such as Noted Collection – aimed specifically at EMEAA’s large pool of unbranded independents – talent infrastructure will be central to sustaining growth at scale.
The promotion positions Bajaj at the intersection of workforce planning, capability building and employee experience for one of the world’s largest hotel companies at a moment of considerable regional momentum.
