I don’t think so. I think in business today, we all have to understand the market, and in the hotel-business, brands are very important. Before I joined the hotel business, I was in the soft-drinks business and the beer business and both were all about brands. The hotel industry has been quite a long way behind other consumer industries when it comes to brands. Andy and I had a very similar view on that. So I think an understanding of brands and an understanding of business, of finance, and the financial markets; are both important in our industry because of the split from the bricks and the brands.How has the hotel industry been “quite a long way behind on other consumer industries?”There are a couple of reasons. The history of the industry and the nature of the people who ran it, as it had evolved in the last 50 years. It’s been more about the real estate and the physical product than it has been about the experience. Genuine customer insight has been lacking in the industry. It’s an area where we have focused a lot of effort. After a remarkable 2011, what are your expectations for 2012? I think we saw good momentum in 2011. In fact, we saw growth in 2010 we hadn’t expected as well, following the Lehman’s effect of 2009. I think in the shorter term, we are genuinely a global business with the U.S., Europe, Asia and the Middle East all contributing to our business and that momentum we saw in 2011 probably gave us a good start into 2012. In the longer term, some of the industry trends remain very attractive.What are these industry trends? It’s to do with a number of things. There’s been a move towards branding in the industry and it’s something we’ve driven, but also benefited from. Over the years, you’ve seen more hotels become branded than not, and that has to do with what we deliver to the customer, but also the confidence you get from the financial markets and the banks lending to hotel owners. Other than that, the emerging economies are driving travel and hotel consumption. We’ve seen low-cost airlines increase demand, the internet’s driven demand, and ageing populations in the developed markets are also driving demand. Leisure travel, is about half of our business now when we speak of room nights, relative to business travel. There are a lot of things going on that have driven growth and hotel revenues above GDP.What about emerging countries, will they be strong enough to provide an increase in revenue?Yes, though the traditional big markets, particularly the U.S., have a lot of opportunities. They may have a lower percentage growth, but it’s off a very big base. I think that in any business, you forget your core business at your peril, so we are very focused on our core business in our core market. Having said that, we also see a lot of opportunity in emerging markets. As you know there is no such thing as “emerging markets”. You have to look at where there are genuine growth opportunities and where your business can actually generate a product that customers want and profitability for our third party owners, so we’re very focused on emerging markets. Our second biggest market now is China in terms of hotel revenues. That’s a meaningful business for us and we’ve separated it as a standalone region now. Then we look at other markets like India and the Middle East, which are high growth markets. A big chunk of our pipeline of hotels is outside of the U.S., in those emerging markets. If you look today, the U.S. is 2/3 of our profit, but is under half of our pipeline. China today, is ten percent of our profit and nearly 30% of our pipeline for future rooms, so you can see that we see significant growth percentage-wise in our emerging-markets-business, but there is also meaningful growth in our core developed markets.Is there a danger of oversupply in developing countries?You have to think about it in a couple of ways. In any market, in any business, there are winners and losers. We’re very careful to always try to pick the best locations, the best owners, and we have this big infrastructure, web, call centres, and technology, that drive business into our hotels. I think in the scenario of growing supply, what you want as a brand owner is to have fast growth. You want to have more than your fair share of that supply growth, which we do. So if I owned a lot of hotels, or if I leased a lot of hotels, I would be more worried about supply growth because my profitability will be coming more from real estate profit. Because we’re partnering with the best people, we can afford to grow faster; we can pick and choose locations and owners. It always comes down to having strong brands that have great experiences that deliver to guests, which drives up returns to owners, and if you’ve got that, chances are you’ll be a winner.Have you already felt the results of the improvement in the US economy within the activity of the Americas division?Last year, in the U.S., with the benefit of new hotels we grew RevPAR by 9.5%, which is well ahead of the industry and clearly is very significant growth. Importantly in the U.S., since March last year, we have seen record demand in the industry. It has been very strong and that has been reflected in the room night demand that’s been there. We’ve been very focused on the U.S., obviously. We relaunched the Holiday Inn brand and we’ve seen performance growth as a result. Financing is still difficult in the U.S., but I think the business trends and the economic trends have clearly driven significant growth in the hotel market.Is financing in the US more or less difficult than in Europe?You have to look market by market. It’s getting tougher to get bank debt than it was before in the hotel sector and in many other sectors too. What that means is having stronger brands becomes more and more important. People are more prepared to finance strong brands they know will deliver revenues, and hence cash and profitability, rather than weaker or unbranded properties.Is Europe a mature market or is there room for a new supply?Yes, but we don’t look at Europe as “Europe”. We look at individual countries because the dynamics are different. Our positions are different. I think in the short term, the Eurozone problems are going to impact economic growth and hence, it’s going to impact our industry. Looking outside of that, there is clearly opportunity for growth in Europe. Then you have markets which aren’t Europe, per se, like Turkey and Russia, which look very interesting, that we run as part of our Europe region, where we see very interesting growth opportunities.What about France?We have a few hotels in France. Accor is a very big player in France and France clearly has its own economic issues. We continue to grow in France but it’s a small market for us.Is the British market going to benefit from the Olympic stimulus? In the bigger picture, I think the Olympics will be great for the UK. We’re heavily involved in it. We’re a sponsor. In the short term, the Olympics will be helpful but not a big driver of the business if you look at the year as a whole. Frankly, you lose some of the traditional leisure and business travel. In many cases, a lot of rooms were committed to the Olympics as part of the bid at a discounted rate so I think the Olympics will be on balance good, but not a huge driver for us.How do you feel about the new supply that was introduced to the British market because of the Olympics?It’s relatively marginal. It’s not that easy to add a new supply in a market like London.Is the Holiday Inn relaunch finished or is there still more that is going to take place? The reason we focused on Holiday Inn is because it’s our biggest brand but also we see significant growth. A lot of that growth is going to be mid-market mainstream travelers, so it’s very important for us that Holiday Inn be made relevant for future guests. As part of that, we removed over 1,000 hotels and we added over 1,500 new hotels globally. Since the big relaunch, what we’ve seen is significant outperformance both in terms of occupancy and rates. As with any brand, I always talk about polishing the diamond and keeping it fresh. The reality of Holiday Inn was that we left it for a few years without changing it and so the refresh was to bring it back up to date. We’re working now on the food and beverage experience, but there will be other things over time. What we won’t have is another relaunch; it will just be proper brand management.Did you expect to lose as many franchisees as you did? Was it a surprise?No, it wasn’t a surprise at all. In fact it was part of the original plan. We already had a pipeline of new hotels to come in, so we had already made the decision ourselves that a lot of our hotels would not make the journey with us because they were in the wrong location, or the owner wasn’t a committed owner, or whatever the reason might be. Now, we did lose a few more than we expected, which was really driven by the economic situation, but I’m talking about a handful, some thousands of rooms. The vast majority we expected to leave, that was part of the plan and part of the programme.How is the Crowne Plaza rebranding coming along? Crowne Plaza is a very strong brand…but in North America, the quality of the brand is not as high as it is in Europe, and particularly in Asia, so we need to bring up the quality. We need to make sure that the brand is differentiated properly and that it stays relevant, we will be probably taking out ten percent of the hotels, at least 40 hotels out of the existing 400 or so, a lot of them in North America. In the next three years, we will be repositioning the brand so we can bring everywhere in the world to the standard we have in Asia.Let’s talk about these new brands, Even and Hualuxe. Are you localizing brands for different regions, or do you rather believe in international brands? Yes and No. If you’re truly a branded company, you have to start with where the guests are, what they want, and then your opportunity to serve them. So HUALUXE is a brand that we developed in China by our Chinese team for Chinese guests, currently for China. Because we’re already the biggest international hotel company in China, we have the capacity now to move to the next step, which is customers who want the comfort and the confidence of being part of an international company but with a local brand that recognizes their local needs. Ultimately, there’s no question we will have that brand outside China for Chinese travelers who come overseas, so I think it’s a local brand, but it will also become an international brand which is why I said yes and no. EVEN Hotels in America is again driven by a very clear insight that wellness, not fitness, not luxury spas, but general wellness, is a growing trend in that market. There’s a sizeable market segment that wants something a little more targeted, and very importantly it’s at an affordable price point, which has never been done before. I hope to announce the first locations later this year. Again, I think it has legs internationally, but today we’re focused on the U.S.Is there a minimum target size when you create a new brand?Yes, I think. We’re a scale business. Our enterprise delivers well into scale brands and therefore brands that can be meaningful. There isn’t an absolute number because it’s more revenue driven than it is numbers driven, but we probably wouldn’t launch a brand that wouldn’t get to at least 200 hotels and obviously in some cases, significantly more.And that would be 200 in what timeline?For HUALUXE, it is an up market hotel so the number of hotels would be lower. For EVEN, we have talked about signing 100 hotels within the next five years.How is Hotel Indigo development coming along outside the United States, particularly in Europe? We’ve deliberately been quite slow as we took it outside the U.S. to make sure we open the right hotels in the right places to really launch it. For a new-ish brand in the upscale segment, it’s grown well. It does take time to build these hotel brands. We don’t just stick them on the shelf overnight. It takes time for hotels to get opened, guests to get to know them, and more importantly, for owners to get confident. One tends to see a slow growth before it takes off. It’s slower to develop in Europe than it is in Asia or America because Europe is obviously more established, the infrastructure is already there, it’s harder to do new build, and it’s harder to get planning permission and so on. It’s a slower burn.Do you have the resources to support the marketing and development that goes behind promoting these brands?Yes we do. There’s no question. There are a couple of ways to think about that. One is that we have significant scale and we have significant resources. Because we don’t own the hotel, all of our resources effectively go into managing the business, managing the brands, and creating new brands. That is really our job. We’re an operator and brander of hotels, not an owner of hotels. We think very carefully about the scale and scope of growth and how much we can do at once. We’re very confident that we’ve got the expertise in the group or we can bring it in. I very recently announced the appointment of Larry Light as our new chief brands officer. If you look at big hotel players, we’ve still got fewer brands than some of our competitors. What I think we’ve done is leverage the scale of our individual brands very effectively and it’s now a very good time to add some new ones.Having set the bar so high up with Holiday Inn brand recognition, do you think brand recognition for the other brands will come about easily?You have to look at them differently. It does take a long time to create awareness. Whether B-to-B or B-to-C, it helps to be part of a big family. But I think that generally as an industry, hotel brands don’t have the awareness that some of the other iconic brands out there have, so it’s something we’re very focused on pushing. I think that relative to our major competitors, we have good awareness, but you can always do more.Asset light: is there no turning back, or will we once again see a financial commitment to real estate?Today, we own only 11 hotels, but that’s two billion dollars’ worth of real estate and we’ve been very clear that we’ll invest in real estate where it supports our brands or accelerates our growth, but that real estate, or invested capital is always available for recycling. We’re asset-light, we’re not asset-zero. We’re also not lease-heavy, which some of our competitors are. I think it’s important that there be good financial reasons why it makes sense for us to be the operator and brand owner and partner with the real estate owners, because I think it keeps our focus. I think asset light is the right way to go. So we may add the odd hotel over time, but we will sell hotels over time and the asset intensity of the group will continue to go down as we grow.