IHG has signed a franchise agreement with Foremost Hospitality GmbH to introduce 20 new Holiday Inn and Holiday Inn Express properties across the country's key cities by 2016.

Speaking about the signing Karl-Heinz Pawlizki, IHG's director of operations, Germany, said: "As IHG's sixth biggest market globally by number of rooms and seventh by hotels, Germany remains a priority market for us and Foremost Hospitality an important strategic p artner.

"With 55 hotels currently operating under the Holiday Inn brand family in Germany* of which nine** are already open with the new Holiday Inn brand flags, this new agreement demonstrates our owner community's support of the worldwide relaunch of the Holiday Inn brand family. Furthermore, we believe this agreement will ensure we are ideally placed to continue our growth within one of Europe's best performing markets."

Of the 20 properties within the agreement, seven hotel contracts are already signed and development underway. These include the November signing of two additional hotel contracts; the 328-room Holiday Inn Berlin City Centre - Potsdamer Platz, expected to open March 2011, and the 150-room Holiday Inn Express Berlin City Centre - Alexander Platz, scheduled to open March 2010.

Notes:
*There are currently 55 hotels operating under the Holiday Inn brand family in Germany, of which 41 are Holiday Inn and 14 are Express by Holiday Inn properties.  As of 30 September 2008 Germany's pipeline of signed deals was three Holiday Inn and nine Holiday Inn Express properties, which includes five signed deals with Foremost Hospitality. 
 
**Of the nine hotels in Germany complete with the new Holiday Inn  signage seven are Holiday Inn Express hotels (Berlin City Centre - West, Essen, Frankfurt - Messe, Munich Airport, Nürnberg - Schwabach, Singen and Stuttgart Airport) and two are Holiday Inn hotels (Frankfurt City - South, Conference Centre and Munich City Centre).