Overall ranking: 11 (26)
Hotel ranking: 4 (7)

Ian Carter - Snapshot
Ian Carter is chief executive of Hilton International Hotels, which owns, leases, manages or franchises 405 hotels in 80 countries (excluding the USA) and employs more than 61,000 staff.

Its portfolio includes more than 260 four- and five-star Hilton hotels, 59 Hilton Worldwide Resorts and, in northern Europe, 131 mid-market Scandic hotels. The group also has four timeshare resorts in Scotland and Egypt with 271 units.

In the UK and Ireland, Hilton’s 15,300 bedrooms across 71 properties make it the third largest hotel brand by bedroom numbers.

Earlier this year, a £3.3b merger reunited Hilton International with its US parent Hilton Hotels Corporation after a 40-year separation to create a group with a combined 2,800 hotels and 150,000 staff across the world.

Ian Carter - Career guide
Carter, who is 45 this year, gained broad international management and marketing experience at British Steel, consumer products conglomerate Unilever, General Electric (in Europe and the USA) and Low & Bonar.

Before joining Hilton, Carter then worked for the Black & Decker Corporation as officer and president for Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

He took on his current role at Hilton in February 2005.

Ian Carter - What we think
Carter’s appointment marks a growing trend among large hotel groups (others include InterContinental and Starwood) to appoint bosses from the fast-moving consumer goods sector. This increased focus on brand marketing signals an acceleration of the hotel companies’ move away from property ownership to hotel management.

Carter is an expert in marketing, managing change (he turned around Black & Decker’s ailing European operation) and financial and quality control.

Hilton kick-started its switch from asset ownership with two UK sale-and-leaseback deals in 2001 and 2002. By mid-2006, the group had sold off around $700m-worth (£373m) of assets through outright sales or sale-and-manageback deals.

In February 2004, the group also identified franchising as a new route to expand its Hilton and Scandic brands and during the year it opened eight franchised hotels in India co-branded as Trident Hilton. By 2006 it had 25 franchisees and Carter expects to raise this to a three-digit figure within five years.

As a newcomer to the hotel trade, Carter spent his first nine months at Hilton visiting 200 hotels in 45 countries to monitor operations at all levels.

His first big project was to bring sales, marketing, distribution and IT under one roof in a move that increased the nights booked and associated food and beverage spend by up to 6%.

In tandem with HHC’s ambition to grow its combined estate to 4,000 hotels within five years, Carter has set his sights on doubling the number of Hilton International bedrooms over the next three to four years and intends to add more than 5,000 new rooms across 23 hotels in 2007.

A key plank in this expansion will be the roll-out of brands that have to date been exclusive to the USA, such as Hilton Garden Inn, Hampton Inn and Doubletree – a project that screams out for Carter’s brand expertise.

It will bring Hilton’s international offer in line with competitors who already provide a suite of offers at all service levels.

This new focus appears to lie behind the August announcement that Hilton is planning to sell all or part of the mid-market Scandic portfolio, which is viewed as a determinedly regional brand.

At the same time, the group offloaded 24 UK and three Australian stand-alone LivingWell health and fitness clubs for a combined $101m (£54m). The sale left the group with 51 Premier and 41 Express clubs within Hilton hotels.

Hilton, which is one of the best-known hotel brands in the world, showed its first signs of uninterrupted recovery for some time in 2004. By 2005, the UK-based company had boosted pre-tax profit from £159m to £187.5m on turnover up from £2.7b to £2.9b.

The Hilton Group (which comprised of Ladbroke and Hilton International) moved up from 92nd to 72nd position in the 2005 peer-reviewed Britains Most Admired Companies list of the pan-industry top 220.

Ian Carter – Further information

Hilton International profile on CatererSearch

Hilton International official websites

Hilton International profile on Wikipedia

Hilton International profile on Google/Yahoo finance

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