Our History

2001

Kew Green Hotels bursts into life

Legend has it that our co-founders decided on the name whilst enjoying a cup of coffee in Kew Green.

2003

One becomes three

We opened three hotels with the Days Hotel in Wakefield.

2004

11 more

We purchased 11 Courtyard by Marriott hotels from Whitbread.

2005

Going large

We opened the largest (at the time) Holiday Inn Express Hotel in Europe, at Stansted Airport.

2006

Rebranding

Planning started on building a brand-new Courtyard by Marriott based in the South Terminal at Gatwick Airport while we rebranded all our other Courtyard by Marriott properties to Holiday Inn.

2006 - 2014

Recession bites

We’ve fast-forwarded to 2014 to avoid those ‘recession years’ as we had our heads down, focused on delivering outstanding service and returns for our shareholders within the portfolio.

2014

Booming business

We purchased 21 Holiday Inn Hotels, which made us IHG’s largest franchise partner in Europe. We also took on 6 new hotel management contracts.

2015

Overseas investment

We were acquired by Hong Kong China Travel Service (CTG).

CTG Hotel Holdings has the largest travel agency in China with over 20 years’ experience operating in mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau. 

2017

Going global

​​We were asked to manage several hotels in Hong Kong and China.

2019

A first-of-its-kind partnership

We partnered with Aprirose to successfully create a brand-new hotel operating platform, Almarose Hotels & Resorts.

Almarose operates 4-star luxury resorts with golf, spa and leisure facilities and the partnership with us was the UK’s first of its kind.

2020

Global Pandemic

We appointed our new CEO Chris Dexter.

COVID-19. We pivoted for purpose, over half our hotels remained open to provide 130,000 rooms for key workers during various lockdowns.

Kew Green Hotels were appointed to exclusively provide hotel management services for Light Human Hotels’ international portfolio, which will launch hotels in destinations including Vila Real, Curitiba, Paris, Miami, Toulon, Corsica, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Porto from the end of 2022.

2021

Bangkok beckons

We opened the Wyndham Queen Sirikit Convention Centre and Wyndham Garden in Bangkok.

We announced our joint-venture with Siamese Asset, to form Siamese and Kew Green Management Company, Thailand.

Siamese and Kew Green Management Company, Thailand is uniquely placed to not only manage hotels from Siamese Asset, but also any hotels from other owners in Thailand in the future. 

2022 - onwards

The next chapter...

China Travel Group is concentrating on further investment into the expansion of its travel and tourism operations, both in mainland China and globally.

As well as looking at further UK and European expansion through the Kew Green platform, the company is expanding its hotel and tourism related operations in Asia Pacific, Africa and the Americas, and has a number of projects in development in each continent.