IHG Hotels & Resorts has appointed Neetu Mistry as Managing Director for its UK & Ireland estate, effective 3 March 2026. She steps into one of the company’s most commercially significant regional leadership roles, taking responsibility for a portfolio of more than 400 open and pipeline hotels across 11 brands – and succeeding Joanna Kurowska in the position.
Mistry brings more than two decades of experience spanning UK and European hotel management companies, with a career that has consistently centred on commercial growth, portfolio optimisation and owner value creation. She holds a First Class BA (Hons) in Marketing with Business from Middlesex University, and supplemented that foundation with the CIM Advanced Level Certificate in Marketing and an IDM certificate in direct and digital marketing in the early stages of her career.
Her professional trajectory reflects a steady progression through revenue and commercial leadership. She held roles at Whitbread, the hospitality group behind Premier Inn, and at Redefine Hotel Management as Cluster Revenue Manager, before moving to RBH Hotels as Group Director of Revenue – a position that gave her broad oversight of multi-property performance across a substantial managed portfolio. Most recently, she served as Chief Commercial Officer at Cycas Hospitality from 2018 to 2025, where she led commercial strategy across the company’s growing European portfolio of IHG and Marriott-branded hotels. Alongside her corporate roles, Mistry also served as an Owner Representative on one of IHG’s regional councils, a position that gave her direct insight into the concerns and priorities of the franchised owner community she will now serve.
In her new role, Mistry will oversee the continued growth and performance of IHG’s UK & Ireland estate, with particular emphasis on strengthening relationships across the company’s diverse owner community. The UK & Ireland market spans 11 brands – from luxury InterContinental and lifestyle-led Kimpton and Hotel Indigo through to the midscale and essentials segment anchored by Holiday Inn Express, Holiday Inn, Garner and Staybridge Suites, with voco, Ruby Hotels, Crowne Plaza and Vignette Collection completing the line-up. It is a portfolio that reflects the breadth of IHG’s brand architecture and the group’s deliberate positioning across every major travel segment.
Karin Sheppard, Senior Vice President & Managing Director, Europe, IHG Hotels & Resorts, described Mistry as bringing a combination of strategic clarity, operational understanding and deep commercial knowledge of the UK & Ireland market – attributes she said would be central to unlocking the full potential of the region’s business and deepening owner partnerships.
The UK & Ireland represents a market of considerable strategic weight for IHG. Domestic travel demand has remained resilient, and sustained owner investment has continued to drive both new openings and refurbishment activity across the estate. With more than 400 properties already open or in the pipeline, the region sits firmly among IHG’s most developed markets globally. That scale also gives Mistry immediate leverage: her mandate to drive portfolio performance and commercial returns will be executed against the backdrop of a mature but actively growing market where owner relationships and brand differentiation increasingly determine competitive outcomes.
IHG operates as one of the world’s largest hotel companies, with nearly 7,000 open hotels across more than 100 countries and a development pipeline of approximately 2,300 further properties. Its loyalty programme, IHG One Rewards, counts more than 160 million members globally. The UK & Ireland appointment follows a broader period of brand expansion for the group, which added Ruby Hotels to its portfolio through an acquisition completed in 2024.
