IHG approved Oracle OPERA for its hotels across EMEA and the Americas

IHG Hotels & Resorts (IHG) has approved the Oracle OPERA Cloud hospitality platform for its estate across the Americas and EMEAA (Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia). The approval sees the cloud platform join an exclusive list of property management systems. That list includes Amadeus PM Pro, which is widely used across IHG and Best Western International.

However, IHG intends to migrate the group’s systems to cloud platforms, and Amadeus is nearing the end of its life. Moreover, OPERA is not the only option for franchises; HotelKey became its first cloud-based PMS solution for limited-service brands in the United States and Canada. The approval for OPERA is wider.

It will be interesting to see how many hotels IHG rolls out OPERA to in the coming months and whether that impacts the HotelKey project in the Americas. The company originally planned to deploy the solution to 1,500 properties by the end of 2025.

Franchisees and hotel owners will now have a wider choice of PMS solutions that better suit their individual business needs. OPERA is a comprehensive solution that meets the needs of hotels of various sizes and levels of complexity.

It simplifies IT and centralises data, making information accessible to everyone, anywhere. With an open architecture, built-in integration services, and open APIs to accelerate innovation, the hotel cloud solution meets hoteliers’ needs and redefines the guest experience.

Jolie Fleming, Chief Product & Technology Officer, IHG Hotels & Resorts, said, “We’ve been on an exciting journey toward new cloud-based property management system solutions at IHG. The Oracle OPERA Cloud hospitality platform brings advanced capabilities that will help drive performance for our hotel portfolio, including the most complex IHG properties.”

IHG strengthens Oracle relationship

Alex Alt, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Oracle Commercial Cloud Applications, commented, “We are proud to deepen our longstanding collaboration with IHG to deliver cutting-edge cloud technologies to their franchisees.

“OPERA Cloud provides a proven, scalable, and highly user-intuitive suite that empowers data-driven decision making, streamlines operations, and delivers enhanced experiences for both guests and staff.”

That relationship goes back several years. IHG selected the cloud-based MICROS Simphony Enterprise Solution as its next-generation point-of-service solution for 61 UK hotels. Oracle OPERA is already used across the IHG estate. Notably, Hotel Indigo locations in the UK and the Cayman Islands use OPERA.

OPERA Cloud is designed to deliver enterprise-class reliability for hotels, ensuring that operations run smoothly and efficiently. With its secure single sign-on feature, OPERA Cloud safeguards sensitive data and streamlines user access. It provides a robust security framework essential to today’s hospitality industry.

OPERA Cloud is committed to staying ahead of industry trends by offering quarterly updates. These regular enhancements enable hotels to maintain high operational standards and remain competitive, all while minimising the need for IT intervention. This approach allows hotel staff to focus on delivering exceptional guest experiences, rather than being distracted by technical issues.

Currently, OPERA Cloud is live and supports fiscal compliance in 236 countries and territories. This extensive coverage ensures hotels can operate seamlessly across regions, meet local regulatory requirements, and maintain consistent operational quality worldwide.

Enterprise Times: What does this mean

This is a significant announcement for Oracle OPERA. The endorsement from IHG opens up a huge number of opportunities. Globally IHG group has around 6,800 hotels, though it is worth noting that Asia was not included in the announcements. With around 1,000 hotels in Asia, though, that still leaves Oracle a huge number to target.

It will be interesting to see whether Oracle can persuade some hotels to become customer advocates. The faster they can complete case studies of the benefits hotels see the bigger the share of the portfolio. For IHG, it is giving its franchisees a greater choice of solutions. It will be interesting to see whether they push Oracle OPERA as their preferred choice in the future.

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