InterContinental Hotels Group has opened Bulgaria's first InterContinental Hotels & Resorts-branded property in the capital city of Sofia.
When it opens, the 194-room InterContinental Sofia will have 27 club rooms and 37 suites in the center of the city.
The hotel is near Bulgaria's parliament building, the Tsar Liberator Monument, St Alexander Nevski Cathedral, the main financial district, the Vitosha mountain and nine UNESCO World Heritage sites.
The new property brings InterContinental’s total inventory in Eastern Europe to seven. The brand's entire European portfolio has 33 hotels with another four slated to open within the next three to five years. The InterContinental in Bulgaria joins IHG's newest hotels in Eastern Europe, following the Holiday Inn Warsaw City Centre, the Holiday Inn Express Moscow-Paveletskaya and the Holiday Inn Express-Sheremetyevo Airport. IHG’s development pipeline in the region also includes three Eastern European hotels: The Holiday Inn Express St. Petersburg-Sadovaya, the Holiday Inn Express Moscow-Khovrino and the Holiday Inn Express Astana-Turan in Kazakhstan.
This recent opening follows IHG's deal to rebrand and operate 13 hotels across the UK in London, Edinburgh, Leeds, York, Oxford, Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow, Cardiff and Guildford. The group signed the hotels with French real estate group Foncière des Régions, who acquired the properties from Starwood Capital Group for $1.1 billion in early May 2018. The hotels, which currently operate under the Principal Hotels and De Vere Hotels brands, will begin operating under Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants and a new IHG luxury brand, which has not been named. This not only marks Kimpton’s debut in the UK market, but also launches a new IHG brand.