Hello, everybody, and welcome to IHG Preliminary Results to 31 December 2021. My name is Bethany, and I'll be your operator for today's call. If you would like to register to ask a question during the presentation, you can do so by pressing star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If you change your mind, you can press star two. I will now hand the call over to your host, Stuart Ford. Stuart, over to you. Thank you, Bethany. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to IHG's conference call for the 2021 full year results. I'm Stuart Ford, Head of Investor Relations at IHG, and I'm joined this morning by Keith Barr, our Group Chief Executive, and Paul Edgecliffe-Johnson, our Chief Financial Officer and Group Head of Strategy. Just to remind listeners on the call that in the discussions today, the company may make certain forward-looking statements as defined under U.S. law. Please do refer to this morning's announcement and the company's SEC filings for factors that could lead actual results to differ materially from those expressed in or implied by any such forward-looking statements. For those analysts or institutional investors who are listening via our website, may I remind you that in order to ask questions, you will need to dial in using the details on page two of this morning's RNS release. The release, together with the presentation and the usual supplementary data pack, can be downloaded from the Results and Presentation section under the Investors tab on ihgplc.com. I'll now hand over the call to Keith. Thanks, Stuart, and good morning, everyone. In a moment, Paul will talk you through our financial performance. But first, let me share some key highlights for the year. Thanks to the collective efforts of our teams in working closely with our owners and listening to our guests, we delivered a strong performance in 2021 that gives us great confidence in the shape of this recovery and things to come. Our room signings and openings were significantly ahead of the prior year, and we're seeing excellent momentum across the business. The impact of travel restrictions around the world were, of course, still felt, but with global RevPAR down 30% relative to 2019 for the year as a whole. Trading improved significantly on 2020, with RevPAR some 46% higher and occupancy at times at record highs in some local markets. By the Q4 global RevPAR was down just 17% versus 2019, with nearly half of our hotels back to pre-pandemic levels. In December, the Americas was actually up on 2019. This significant trading improvement, coupled with the actions we've taken to deliver sustainable cost reductions, translated into EBIT more than doubling. Our high-quality fee streams and disciplined use of capital drove significant free cash flow of $571 million, which is back above 2019 levels. On the strength of this performance and our outlook for future growth and profitability, we have taken the decision to resume the dividend with a proposed final payment equivalent to that which was withdrawn in March 2020. Throughout the pandemic, we have made sure that as we've dealt with its challenges, we have not lost sight of delivering on our plans to position IHG for long-term growth. We made important progress in 2021 on multiple fronts that will ensure we emerge from this period a stronger company. We've continued to invest in the quality and consistency of our estate, including completing our Holiday Inn and Crowne Plaza review. We've reduced our cost base to create a more efficient model with $75 million of recurring savings. We've launched Vignette Collection to further strengthen the attractiveness of our portfolio. We have kept investing in the enterprise that underpins it, developing our technology offer for guests and owners and delivering a new loyalty program that this year will truly transform the experience for our guests and owners. We've also made sure that we're set up to grow in the right way through our ambitious 2030 Journey to Tomorrow responsible business plan, with key steps in 2021, including upgrading to a 1.5-degree science-based carbon reduction target. We'll talk in more detail about each of these shortly, but for now, let me hand over to Paul to take you through the financial results. Thank you, Keith, and good morning, everyone. Starting as usual with our headline results from reportable segments. Revenue of $1.4 billion, an operating profit of $534 million increased 40% and 144% respectively against 2020. Underlying revenue from the fee business increased 38%, and operating profit 104%. Adjusted interest, including charges relating to the system fund, increased to $142 million as expected. Our effective tax rate of 31% was in line with our previous guidance. We expect the effective tax rate for 2022, and most likely for the next few years, to continue to be around 30%. In aggregate, this performance resulted in an adjusted earnings per share of $1.47, up very strongly from the $0.31 in 2020. Turning now to our drivers of performance, where to show the status of the recovery to our previous peak trading, I will also compare against 2019's performance. Group RevPAR continued to recover rapidly, and across the year was just under 30% behind 2019's level, including the adverse effect from hotels that were temporarily closed. This reflects rate of just 8% and occupancy 16.5 percentage points behind. During the year, we added 44,000 rooms to our system. Our continued focus on the long-term health and quality of our established brands resulted in the removal of 50,000 rooms. Nearly 70% of these removals related to Holiday Inn and Crowne Plaza, which I'll talk about more in a moment. These additions and removals brought net system size growth on a year-on-year basis to negative 0.6%, and on a two-year basis to negative 0.4%. Our usual summary of total RevPAR growth and total rooms available on an underlying basis can be found in the appendix. Looking at our RevPAR performance over the year, you can clearly see differing trends in monthly RevPAR by region. Both Americas and EMEAA saw sequential monthly progress, with both regions having a strong summer boosted by leisure demand, driving a significant recovery in rate. Momentum continued in both regions during the second half of the year. Our Greater China region saw more volatility in performance, largely driven by localized lockdowns and government-mandated travel restrictions. I will now take you through our regional performance in more detail. Starting with the Americas, where RevPAR recovered to only 20% lower than 2019, with the U.S. down 17%. In the Q4, U.S. RevPAR improved to down just 5%, but with 2% growth in rate. This included RevPAR being ahead of 2019 levels across Holiday Inn Express and our extended stay brands. Across all our franchise hotels, which are largely in the upper mid-scale segment and in non-urban locations, RevPAR was almost at par with 2019. Though in our managed estate, which is weighted towards luxury and upscale hotels in urban locations, RevPAR remained 23% below. During the year, we opened 16,000 rooms across the Americas, of which more than half were for the Holiday Inn brand family. This is more than offset by 31,000 rooms exiting, including 20,000 across Holiday Inn and Crowne Plaza. Underlying fee business revenue increased 51% to 81% of 2019's performance, and underlying fee operating profit increased 75% to 86% of 2019, driven in part by delivery of sustainable cost savings and an $11 million payroll tax credit. Our owned, leased, and managed lease portfolio improved profitability by $18 million. They were still $46 million down on 2019 due to weaker demand in urban markets where these hotels are located. Towards the end of the year, we sold our 3 owned EVEN Hotels, maintaining franchise contracts. These hotels contributed a loss of $3 million in 2021. Looking at our future growth, we signed 18,000 rooms, ahead of the 14,000 signed in 2020, taking our Americas pipeline to 97,000 rooms. Looking at our U.S. business and leisure mix in more detail. Leisure demand stayed strong in the Q4, with room nights consumed up 2% on 2019 and rates up over 7%. As you'll recall, we are largely exposed to domestic business demand, and this steadily picked up through the year, with business room nights down only 8% in the Q4 and with rate down less than 5%. This strong rate environment across each segment is encouraging as we continue to see demand build back. Moving now to Europe, Middle East, Asia, and Africa, where RevPAR has also been recovering rapidly and was up over 100% year-on-year in the Q4. Compared to 2019's performance, RevPAR was 52% lower for the year and 33% lower in the Q4. In the U.K., Q4 RevPAR continued to recover to just 16% below 2019's, with the provinces almost at par. The high level of restrictions in continental Europe held recovery back in those markets, with RevPAR 40% under 2019. Where restrictions were less severe, such as in the Middle East, the recovery was stronger, with RevPAR only 10% behind 2019 and ahead in the UAE, helped by the Dubai Expo 2020 event. Underlying fee revenue increased 37% to $149 million, 54% below 2019, and underlying fee operating profit increased by $51 million to $32 million. Looking briefly at the development environment, we opened around 10,000 rooms during the year and removed 14,000, of which 11,000 were Holiday Inn and Crowne Plaza properties. After a particularly strong Q4 signings performance, we signed across the year 20,000 rooms, with conversions accounting for around 30%. Turning now to Greater China, where RevPAR was up 21%. Demand fluctuated throughout the year, particularly in the second half, driven by the reintroduction of travel restrictions in certain provinces, which meant that despite seeing a near full recovery in RevPAR at the end of the first half, RevPAR was 29% under 2019's level for the year as a whole and 33% under in the Q4. Tier one cities across the year saw RevPAR up 26% to two-thirds of 2019's level, although the Q4 was weaker, 40% below 2019. RevPAR in tiers two-four cities, which are more weighted to domestic and leisure travel, recovered to a RevPAR deficit of only 19% for the year, with resort destinations such as Sanya seeing RevPAR ahead of 2019 levels, although these locations also saw a less strong Q4. Underlying fee revenue was up 34% to $110 million, 19% below 2019. Underlying operating profit up 44% to $52 million, 32% below 2019. Net system size in the region increased by 8.9% year-on-year, with 18,000 rooms opened during the year, nearly 60% more than in 2020. Signings were also up, with 31,000 rooms or 153 hotels added to the pipeline, including 80 franchise agreements. Turning now to fee margin. Since the start of the pandemic, we have delivered $75 billion of sustainable annual cost savings through our actions to rebalance resources and drive greater productivity across the business. As I mentioned at our Q3 results, we have also benefited from $25 million of temporary cost reductions in 2021, which are not expected to be retained, as these were largely driven by vacancies in corporate roles and other areas of cost that will come back into the P&L in 2022, like travel. This, along with the recovery in demand, meant that fee margin showed significant improvement year-on-year and was down only four and half points relative to 2019 levels. The sustained high level of focus we have put on driving cost efficiency across the whole of our business has allowed us to reduce our overheads cost base per hotel by 27% versus a decade ago. While balanced with our desire to continue to invest in the business behind growth, our high level of attention on the cost side of the business will allow us to maintain our strong track record of margin accretion. In each of our regions, we grew margins in 2021. Margins are highest in our Americas region, where 90% of our hotels are franchised. The pace of demand recovery, along with our focus on costs, has meant the margin in the Americas is already ahead of pre-pandemic levels. In Greater China, margins are structurally lower, given our higher proportion of managed hotels. As the market further matures and transitions to a higher franchise mix, we see the potential for margins to move above pre-pandemic levels. Moving now to look at the completion of the review of the Holiday Inn and Crowne Plaza estate that we announced last year. We have worked closely with those hotels which were identified as being below where we needed them to be in areas such as customer satisfaction and property condition. We have now concluded this review, and in total, 151 hotels or 34,000 rooms have exited these two brands. In addition, in the Americas and EMEAA regions, capital investment has been secured with 83 hotels whereby they will stay in the system. This has driven the significant increase to the consistency and quality of the estate we have been targeting. With two-thirds of Holiday Inns and nearly three-quarters of Crowne Plazas in the Americas recently updated or committed to renovation, both brands are now well positioned to meet guest expectations and to continue expanding their distribution. The actions we've taken across the business mean we are strongly positioned to achieve our ambition of delivering industry-leading net system-size growth. We expect an acceleration in gross openings over the next two years, supported by over 40% of our pipeline being under construction and the attractiveness of conversions to our brands. Keith will talk more about the progress we're seeing in this area shortly. Following completion of the review of Holiday Inn and Crowne Plaza, we also expect to see a lower average removal rate, which should be in line with our prior underlying rate, excluding those two brands of around 1.5%. We can see the strength of our brands as evidenced by their outperformance of peers on metrics such as guest satisfaction, which in turn drives owner preference. We are further encouraged by the progress in lead indicators that will allow us to return to our previous levels of system growth in the near term. Americas franchise applications, which precede signed deals, increased significantly in 2021, while signings across the business were up 23% and were particularly strong in the Q4. Room openings were up 12% for the year. Turning now to capital expenditure. We spent gross CapEx of $100 million, and net CapEx was an inflow $50 million after proceeds from disposals, principally our three EVEN Hotels in the U.S. and system fund inflows. Maintenance CapEx was $10 million lower than last year, given reduced needs for expenditure at hotels and corporate offices. Key money of $42 million reflect opening activity of hotels, particularly in the second half of the year. On the system fund, given we are at the latter stages of our GRS projects, CapEx spend is now lower and depreciation is higher, which combined resulted in a $49 million positive swing in net CapEx. Our medium-term guidance remains unchanged at up to $350 million gross per annum. We expect our recyclable investments and system fund capital investments to net to zero over the medium term, resulting in net CapEx of $150 million per annum. Moving now to cash flow. During the year, our adjusted free cash flow saw an inflow of $571 million, demonstrating once again the strongly cash generative nature of our business model and our focus on this area. The result included a system fund inflow after the outflow in 2020. Our net cash inflow, which included a favorable exchange rate movement, led to a $648 million reduction to our net debt. From a leverage perspective, we have always run the business on a conservative basis. Our bond maturity profile is staggered with our next significant maturity not due until 2024. The strong rebound in profitability and cash flow has meant that our leverage at 3x is now back beneath our original bank covenant level and our target leverage range. The board is therefore recommending the reinstatement of the ordinary dividend with a final dividend in respect of 2021 of $0.859 proposed. To conclude, trading rebounded strongly in 2021, with operating profit up nearly 150%, aided by our long-term focus on cost efficiency and driving our profit margins while investing behind growth. We drove very strong free cash flow generation and brought our financial leverage down within our target range. We have a strong track record of shareholder returns and our strategy for uses of cash remains unchanged. Our first focus is to reinvest to drive growth. Secondly, we want to generate sufficient funds to pay a sustainably growing ordinary dividend. Lastly, where there is further cash available which is truly surplus, we will return this to shareholders as we have previously demonstrated. We will do this while continuing to target a leverage ratio of 2.5x-3x, which we are now back to, and with our objective of maintaining our investment grade credit rating. With that, let me now hand you back to Keith. Thanks, Paul. Our industry continues to evolve, accelerated in part by the pandemic. I want to take a moment to discuss how IHG is responding and adapting as a business. As Paul talked about, we're seeing a strong recovery in demand, particularly in resorts and leisure, and in more suburban areas where we've seen some of our hotels get back above 2019 levels. The areas that are still relatively more challenged are urban, so the New Yorks, Chicago, Paris, Londons of the world. As more offices return to work, more groups and meetings come back, and the practicalities and ease of international travel is restored, we're confident of a full recovery for the industry and a resumption of its attractive long-term growth characteristics. If we think about our guests and what trends we see as a company need to respond to, they are placing an increasing value on seamless technology and a stronger expectation that businesses will bring sustainable practices to the fore. There's also the shift to hybrid working, with more companies considering how and where to bring their teams together, and employees looking at how to combine business and vacation stays. For our owners, as more people head through the doors of their hotels, many are now turning their attention to growth and opening new hotels. In parallel, we also understand the current short-term challenges owners are facing, and we are providing support and solutions to ease pressure on supply chains, cost inflation, and labor availability. In terms of growth fundamentals, IHG has 4% of open rooms globally, and notably nearly 11% of the industry's global pipeline. That's an incredibly strong position for IHG to be in, and it means we will continue to take share and increase our relative scale against the rest of the industry. Given the power of our asset-light model and its ability to generate high-quality fee income streams, delivering industry-leading net rooms growth remains our clear ambition. We went into this pandemic on the back of excellent growth. If we look back across the last few years, we have made significant investments and enhancements to every aspect of our enterprise ready for the next chapter of growth. Our four strategic priorities are in place to help us achieve that. Let me spend a few moments on each pillar. First is how we are building loyal and trusted brands. Since 2017, we have added six brands to our portfolio and invested in our existing brands to create a much richer offer. Each brand sits in a high-value segment and caters to a different stay occasion, which ultimately drives growth. This means that we now have a fuller and more attractive brand portfolio that offers guests more opportunities to stay at an IHG property to earn and redeem loyalty points with us, and also more chances for owners to work with us. You see this very clearly in Europe involves three hotels under our Vignette Collection and one as a voco hotel. The second deal in Vietnam involved two Holiday Inn Resorts, a Crowne Plaza and a voco. These are both deals that would have been difficult for us to access in recent past. Today we have the breadth of brands that open up new opportunities for us and will help accelerate our growth. When it comes to our new brands, we've talked before about the strategic approach we take when assessing the opportunities out there. In short, we focus on two things, high-value markets, where we can tap into deep pools of unmet consumer demand to create scale positions, and developing a differentiated guest and owner offer. This highly targeted, insight-driven approach has guided our decision-making for the launches of Vignette Collection, Avid, Atwell Suites, and voco, and the acquisitions of Regent and Six Senses. Each of their target markets is extremely large and with attractive long-term industry dynamics. Each one of these brands represents a clear and compelling growth opportunity for us, which over time has the capability to add around $300 million in annual fee income to our P&L. We target each brand to deliver at least $50 million in fee income, and you can see here the progress we are making, what we already have open in the system and signed in our pipeline, and what we have left to do to meet our target. Clearly, our newer organic launches have further to go, but based on the guest reviews and owner conversations we're having, we are confident in them and the progress we are making. Just this month, we celebrated our 50th Avid opening, and the brand is already proving a hit with guests, receiving great reviews and outperforming its peers in guest satisfaction. You can see why. It delivers a great night's sleep with a high-quality breakfast at a competitive price point. For owners, an avid hotel can be built and operated at an efficient cost with strong returns. As a result, avid is already our second-largest contributor to system growth, and we expect continued momentum this year. With voco, our upscale conversion brand, after a very successful start in EMEAA, it has gone global over the last couple of years, with signings and open hotels in 25 countries. This includes properties in key gateway cities such as New York, Singapore, and Dubai. We're seeing strong traction across both urban and leisure markets with the ability to apply the brand in resorts right through to all suite properties. Guests love the brand too, ranking it top of its competitive set, and our owners are seeing increased guest satisfaction scores on conversion. First and foremost, our brands are about offering guests a great stay experience. We do see that as hybrid working evolves and office space shrinks, there's gonna be more demand for co-working spaces, especially as people don't want to go back to the office five days a week, but also don't want to be sitting at the kitchen table every day. People are going to want to find those welcoming spaces where they can easily connect with others. This plays right into some of our brands, particularly our Crowne Plaza workspaces and Holiday Inn Open Lobby concepts. We now have Open Lobby installed or committed in almost our entire estate in Europe, with hotels seeing a meaningful uplift in guest satisfaction and owners benefiting from increased food and beverage revenue. This is also the way we have thought about one of our newer longer stay brands, Atwell Suites, which centers on creating a unique space for guests to work, socialize, and rest. This has been one of the most resilient parts of the market and has seen strong growth, tapping into a $18 billion market in the U.S. Our first Atwell property is due to open in Miami any day now, with more due to open in the U.S. later this year. Turning now to our Holiday Inn Express brand, which is a key growth engine of our business and a real category killer in its segment. As we continue to grow the brand, we also keep pushing to ensure it can offer richer experiences for our guests and even stronger returns for our owners. For example, our next-generation public space and guest room designs in the Americas are creating better stay experiences. We're also able to deliver that in a new purchase-ready format that uses our procurement scale to achieve a cost per key savings of around 10% across furniture, fixtures, and equipment. During 2021, we celebrated our 3,000th Holiday Inn Express opening globally. The strength of the brand, the largest in the industry, combined with the weighting of our distribution to non-urban locations and domestic demand, has led it to consistently outperforming segments in the U.S. over the last two years. We signed another 148 properties during the year, and with a pipeline that represents 26% of the current system size, we see a strong growth outlook in our regions for the brand. I'll now focus on our luxury and lifestyle brands and the opportunities we see across our expanded portfolio, which caters to uniquely different stay occasions. We have a strong heritage in this space with InterContinental Hotels & Resorts, the world's first and largest luxury hotel brand. In recent years, we further developed our luxury concept with restaurants and bar expertise from Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants, spa, wellness, and sustainability capabilities from Six Senses, and upper luxury know-how from Regent. Altogether, this is creating an impressive portfolio for both guests and owners. From two brands in 2014, we now have six. From 240 properties, we now have more than 440, rising to around 500 by the end of this year. In total, luxury and lifestyle is now 13% of our total system size. Even more importantly, our brands in this space represented 23% of our total signings in 2021, showing the strong growth outlook for this high fee segment. Looking in more detail at Regent and Kimpton. Since we acquired Regent, six properties have been signed, taking the pipeline to eight on top of the seven that are currently open. You'll also recall that we're renovating the InterContinental Hong Kong as part of our rebrand back to Regent. That hotel will open this year as a global flagship for the brand. For Kimpton, its excellent international expansion continues, with a flagship opened in Paris and strong signings in key resort locations such as Mallorca, which will open by summer. We're also taking the brand to mainland China, with the first Kimpton hotel due to open in Suzhou later this year. Moving now to our second priority, which is about putting guests and owners at the heart of every decision we make. When it comes to our owners, we work closely with them to maximize their returns by reducing the cost to build and operate. For instance, like with Holiday Inn Express, we developed new prototypes across Holiday Inn and our Extended Stay brands that require less land and use more cost-efficient and environmentally sustainable materials to drive returns. So far, we have new prototypes committed in 150 Candlewood Suites and 140 Staybridge Suites. Similarly, we have fresh and modern prototypes for Holiday Inn hotels across the Americas. The concept brings our successful Open Lobby space and guest room designs together in a more efficient and flexible way with a 15% reduction in building size. To date, more than 250 hotels have adopted or committed to use these new designs. We also improved our processes, supporting reductions in the time it takes to open a property and for a newly opened property to reach full commercial performance. This supports, for example, our target for 2022 to be a record openings year for Hotel Indigo. Clearly, one of the most important things is to build long-standing relationships with our guests and owners, the foundation of which is loyalty. Our IHG Rewards program is a key part of our owner value proposition, where we have over 100 million enrolled members. We have seen member contribution grow by 7 percentage points over the four years prior to the pandemic, and these members traditionally account for more than around half of our guest days. As you might expect, loyalty members stay more and spend more. They're also 9x more likely to book direct, which is the most profitable channel for our owners. Loyalty members have proved to be the most resilient during the toughest periods of the pandemic, and we've made sure to look after them by protecting status and points expiry and introducing new program enhancements such as dynamic pricing for reward nights, which is lowering the average number of points needed for a booking by around 15%, helping members get free nights faster. As you may have seen last month, we are now going much further with the biggest loyalty transformation in our history. This will drive even greater levels of member engagement and attract more guests into the program. As part of this work, we've already announced a simplified tier structure with more bonus points across the different tiers, and we are maintaining our industry-leading bonus points for the Diamond Elite tier, which rewards our most loyal guests. What's still to come is new customer preferred benefits that members will really recognize additional value from and more personalization so that guests can choose the benefits that are most important to them. We're keeping the next phase under wraps for now, but look out for further detail in the coming months. Our third priority is all about how we create digital advantage as a company. This is vital to enabling a seamless technology experience across the guest journey, from driving direct bookings and creating integrated digital experiences for our guests to delivering revenue-enhancing solutions for our owners. Our investment in our cloud-based hotel technology platform, IHG Concerto, is the backbone of this work. It allows us to develop and roll out performance-enhancing tools faster and easier than before. Attribute pricing is being rapidly rolled out with 95% of hotels having now completed detailed room inventory assessments in preparation. This enhancement will drive competitive advantage through allowing guests to choose specific room characteristics when booking and seamlessly add additional non-room stay enhancements that customize their stay and provide incremental revenue to owners. Supporting this, as well as our transformed loyalty offer, is this year's rollout of our next-generation mobile app, which will offer a much richer and more personalized customer experience. Looking at our fourth strategic priority, I've talked before about ensuring our growth ambitions as a business match our aspirations to care for our people, communities, and planet. 2021 was the first year working toward our Journey to Tomorrow 2030 responsible business plan. Starting with our people, we are continually investing in our culture, so we support, develop, and empower colleagues and attract new talent into the business. During the year, corporate colleagues completed more than 10,000 hours of conscious inclusion training, and we further progressed our DE&I agenda through new talent programs. Importantly, our employees are highly engaged by the direction we're taking as a business. This is reflected in IHG again being recognized as a Global Best Employer by Kincentric, who assessed the survey data from our colleagues and benchmarked IHG against other leading companies. In our communities, our clear commitment is to help improve the lives of 30 million people around the world by driving economic and social change through skills training and innovation, providing support in times of natural disasters, and helping tackle food poverty. Progress during the year included extending the reach of our successful IHG Academy program through the launch of IHG Skills Academy, a free global virtual learning platform that will help drive skills development, hospitality training, and career pathways. In terms of our planet, with such a global footprint and strong pipeline of hotels, it's vital that we work closely with our owners and partners to ensure we operate and grow in ways that protect the world around us. In 2021, with respect to carbon emissions, we further upgraded our science-based target to 1.5 degrees and became a signatory to the UN's Race to Zero campaign. Supporting this work is a clear roadmap focused on our three key levers: existing estate energy efficiency, sourcing renewable energy contracts, and developing plans to ensure our new build hotels operate at very low or zero carbon. As part of our focus on minimizing waste, we are on track to eliminate single-use miniature bathroom amenities this year, with solutions now secured for all brands in all markets. In terms of reducing water footprint of our hotels and helping secure water access in our communities, we have made further progress against our final two stewardship projects in Shenzhen, China, and Hayman Island, Australia. As you can see, as we've been dealing with the pandemic, we remain focused on delivering great guest experiences, strong returns for our owners, and an industry-leading level of net system size growth ahead in the years ahead. In the past five years, we have added six new brands to round out the portfolio, including increasing our exposure to the high-value luxury and lifestyle segment. At the same time, we remained laser-focused on evolving our powerhouse Holiday Inn and Holiday Inn Express brands and growing the rest of the estate. We've made big investments in our technology platforms, which is really starting to come to fruition now with things like IHG Concerto and our mobile app. We're making transformational changes to our loyalty offer, and we strengthen our enterprise capability to drive better revenue opportunities, costs, and return for owners. We've also taken costs out of the business and built a clear roadmap of investment across our enterprise to maintain momentum and accelerate growth. To sum it up, we've delivered a strong financial performance with profits more than doubling and net debt substantially reducing. We are executing against the strategic priorities we outlined this time last year. We're well-placed to gain further share with leading brands in the largest markets and segments, supported by our powerful technology and loyalty platforms, and a clear commitment to do the right thing by our people, communities, and planet. Our long-term confidence is as strong as it's ever been, and our owners share that view. As reflected in nearly 300 hotels opening in the year and well over 400 signings, which was 23% more than the prior year. All the actions we have taken over the last two years position us to exceed our pre-pandemic levels of growth and profitability. I'd just like to finish by thanking all of our colleagues for their hard work and dedication and our owners for their partnership. Collectively, we saw another truly inspiring effort in 2021, and we look ahead with confidence from here. With that, Paul and I are happy to take your questions. Thank you. The first question comes from Bilal Aziz at UBS. Bilal, please go ahead. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for taking my questions. Three from my side, please. Firstly, you clearly flagged good signing momentum across the Q4. I guess your U.S. numbers still leave quite a room for recovery there. You mentioned franchise applications now picking up. Keen to hear your thoughts on the construction environment over there and when you expect to see a step-up there, please. Secondly, you know, the statement overall reads quite positively about getting above 4% net unit growth for this year. That still leaves just over 8,000 rooms to be opened incrementally through this year. Perhaps you can walk us through the building blocks and the phasing for those openings this year, given that the signings now will probably impact 2023. Then lastly, just your view on pricing. You know, you've launched the attribute-based pricing system earlier this year, but there's clearly a lot of nervousness around the U.S. consumer. Any data points you can share that gives you confidence that you can drive real rates higher. Thank you. Great. Well, thank you. I'll let Paul take on signings and on, unit growth, and I'll pick up on pricing. Thanks, Keith. Yeah, morning, Bilal. Yes, we are encouraged by the signings environment. I think that our step up in franchise applications was pleasing and really demonstrates the power of our brands. Our owners clearly want to open up more hotels because they make very good returns. If you think about if you're a real estate investor today, whereas previously you might have been considering investing behind retail, behind other forms of commercial real estate, office, for example, but those are sort of off the table right now. More and more capital is being focused into hotels, and that advantages us. We have a very high share of the signings in the industry. Clearly, there is still room for it to recover back to what we were seeing in 2018 or so. That's partly about the financing environment. Once financing eases up and supply chains ease, then I think that we will see more signings come through, which will take our level of openings over time even higher. In terms of our 2022 expectations for growth, that obviously is the components of how many rooms we open and how many rooms we remove. On the removals, I think we've talked pretty consistently about the fact that we can come back down now to 1.5%, which is the underlying rate we've seen, excluding Holiday Inn and Crowne Plaza over a number of years. In terms of openings, in 2021, we saw 5%. 5%, less than 1.5%, would have been a sort of normalized 3.5% for last year. Next year we need to open a few more rooms to get up to where we'd like to see ourselves, which is back in line with what we were seeing in 2018 at 4% or so. Yes, we still have to find some rooms to open during the year. That's not unusual for us. We have some great conversion brands, and we're well-placed to do that. Great. Thanks, Paul. In terms of pricing, I think there were two aspects to the question. There was a little bit there about attribute-based pricing and the health of the consumer and so forth, too. I think if you look at the same data that we're seeing, generally, the consumer is quite healthy, particularly in the U.S. I guess our forward booking indicators, which have extended, give us confidence. We're seeing in terms of leisure demand, which is that truly discretionary spend, it's continuing to accelerate across 2021 and into 2022. We believe that we will see a record level of demand into Q2 and into Q3, kind of set spring break into summer timeframe. In fact, I was telling a journalist the other day, "If you haven't booked your holiday, you might wanna book it now," because truly pricing and availability, pricing is high and availability is low. I think that you're gonna see very, very strong pricing power there. Additionally, you're now seeing business travel begin to return, groups, meetings and conferences and events that have shifted into the Q2, Q3, and Q4. I think overall, you're gonna see a generally healthy consumer and a healthy uplift in demand for travel. In terms of attribute pricing, we are rolling that out right now. We have set up the foundational aspects which required us to touch every single hotel around the world and organize their data. Now we're beginning to phase rollout of that, which will basically enhance the booking and searching experience for our guests, and we'll be driving incremental revenue to our owners as it progresses, but it's still early days. Brilliant. Thank you very much. Thanks, Bilal. The next question comes from Jamie Rollo at Morgan Stanley. Jamie, please go ahead. Thanks. Morning, everyone. Three questions also, please. The first is on the room openings again. Over 40% were in China last year, which is a record high for the company. I'm just wondering how confident you are there in the pace of openings, given the pipeline set in Q3 and Q4. How should we think about the impact to group fees given China is a much lower revenue and margin market compared to the rest of the business? Secondly, specifically on Avid, which you're you know calling out as a significant opportunity, again, the pipeline there shrank quite a lot. I think you terminated more rooms than you signed in the year. I'm just wondering where is it versus your expectations. That seems to be the brand of those six with the biggest absolute potential. Then finally, on the balance between M&A and returning cash, there's clearly lots of opportunity in luxury and lifestyle. I note on slide 33, there's a bit of a gap in that quadrant. I'm just wondering about, you know, whether you are looking to do more acquisitions of brands. I think four of the six were actually acquisitions, rather than homegrown. How do you balance M&A versus a buyback, please? Thank you. Great. I'll let Paul pick up on room openings, then we'll comment on Avid and I'll pick up on M&A. In terms of the room openings, yes, a significant proportion in China, where, as you know, Jamie, we have an excellent business, and it's all our own business. We don't have any master license agreements like some of our competitors. Effectively, we get fees from the rooms that we open in China, unlike some of our competitors. Despite the disturbance of some of the commercial property markets seen in China, we're not really seeing it in our business there. We still watch for it, of course, you know, be complacent, but no signings right now. Signings continue to be very strong. Openings continue to be very strong and really good deals. In terms of the overall blend, what's coming through, then I think if we think about, you know, the components of China, the components of luxury and Amer that we're seeing, it is all gonna sort of blend out. I don't think you're gonna see any significant change in the overall profitability per room, which I know is, you know, one of the things you watch for closely. In terms of Avid, remember that we signed a lot of deals when we launched Avid, and which is owners wanting to build Avids. As they're being able to get financing or not on some of those locations, we've freed up those locations for other owners to come in. We're at 50 hotels open now, and the opportunity is very, very significant. The properties are performing really well, and I have no doubt that this will be a brand of, you know, great scale, over time. It's gonna take a while for it to reach Holiday Inn Express's, you know, 3,000+ hotels. Watch this space, I guess. Yeah, Jamie, just to build on that, too, I mean, we're beginning to see some of the first avids begin to trade with some significant returns going to owners, too, which helps actually accelerate the growth in the pipeline as owners see that it's, you know, great cash on cash returns and then when they're transacting on it as well, too. We're very confident about the continued acceleration up the curve. Now, in M&A, you know, we'll give you our normal answer. We never comment about M&A on anything specific. We're gonna clearly look at the brand portfolio as we've done in recent years, where we've added six brands in to fill up those white spaces. We've done it inorganically in a couple of areas where we felt that the right thing to do was to acquire those brands and organically when we can develop those brands. Great successes when you look at, like, voco, for example, already 2018 and already 70 hotels open in the pipeline across all three regions in gateway cities like Singapore, Dubai, and New York. We'll continue to look at the brand portfolio and determine what's the right approach. We're very, very disciplined in our use of capital, very, very focused on making sure that when we invest in something, it can deliver returns. Get to that stabilized level of $50 million of fee income. It's a scale opportunity and not a niche brand too. Again, we'll continue to expand the brand portfolio, but we're in a pretty great position today when you think about what we've done in luxury and lifestyle, what we've done in mainstream. The fact that now 25% of our signings were conversions, that wouldn't have happened had we not had the brand portfolio that we have today. Thanks. Can I just follow up on sort of one of Bilal's questions? I don't think you answered in terms of the sort of cadence of net unit growth through the year. Is it fair to say that the sort of 4.5% target will be sort of, you know, back-end loaded given your removals were mostly, or half of them were in Q4 last year? You know, openings tend to be in a normal year Q4 loaded as well. Or could it hit 4.5-ish% in Q1 or Q2, year-on-year that is? Thank you. Thanks, Jamie. I think that's just a component of the math of the opening and the removals and the fact that it is, you know, over a trailing twelve-month basis. I think what we've said is that we want. We'd like to see 2022 looking more like 2018. I'm not sure I've said exactly sort of 4.3%. I think starting with a 4%, I think would be a really good performance in the light of what our competitors are guiding to. That's certainly what we hope to see. I mean, clearly, given that it's on a 12-month lag basis, you're not gonna see that on a reported basis until the back end of the year when you've cycled off those abnormally high level of Holiday Inn and Crowne Plaza removals. If you strip that out as the openings come through, it'll look a bit different, but you'd have to make that adjustment. Thank you very much. Thanks, Jamie. The next question comes from Vicki Stern at Barclays. Vicki, please go ahead. Yeah, morning. Just firstly, separate to the Crowne Plaza Holiday Inn program, I think the exits were quite a bit higher than expected in Q4. Just why was that, and how confident are you then in the exit rate going forward being around 1.5%? Or to put it another way, is there anything that could sort of derail that and bring it to exits to a higher level as we look into 2022 or 2023? Back on those franchise applications, thanks for giving the color on the U.S. Just wondering how that sort of indication for the future signings is looking in the other regions, and also a little bit on the lending environment and the other sort of elements of the backdrop in those regions would be helpful. Finally on cash returns, I think before COVID, you were generally happy to sit at the top end of that target leverage range. Just wondering how you're feeling about that today. You're starting the year at 3x net debt to EBITDA. Guess even with the dividend payment, assuming RevPAR continues to recover, you'll be substantially below that by the back half. Just how should we be thinking about the scope for surplus cash return announcements in the second half? Thanks. Thanks, Vicky. In terms of the exits and the fact that we've said that our underlying rate of exits is, if you look back over multiple years, around the 1.5%. In 2021, it was a little ahead of that. In 2020, it was behind that. There were some hotels in 2020 which ordinary course of business we would have exited, but given it's in the middle of a pandemic, we couldn't really. They have then gone in 2021. If you look across 2020 and 2021 combined, the underlying, i.e. ex Holiday Inn and Crowne Plaza rate of removals is at that normalized 1.5%. In terms of franchise applications and you... More broadly, what we're seeing from owners want to open hotels with us around the world. I mean, if you look at our pace of signings in EMEA, in the Q4, signings were exceptionally strong. In China, our signings were exceptionally strong. We're making great returns for owners. Getting financing in place is important. Probably the area where it is most important that it comes back is in the Americas. If you look elsewhere, we're seeing actually very strong signings. In terms of the 2.5-3x net debt to EBITDA, look, in current economic conditions, low interest rates, high availability of funding, I'm happy to be at the top end of that range. Nothing further we're saying today around further return to capital, but hopefully our track record over the last 20 years or so demonstrates our future intent. Very clear. Thanks a lot. Thanks, Vicki. The next question comes from Richard Clarke at AB Bernstein. Richard, please go ahead. Hi, good morning, everybody. Three Questions, if I may. Just starting with your investments in loyalty, and maybe you could just explain, you know, why you're making changes to your loyalty program here. Is there anything you're sort of dissatisfied with or any aims you're trying to get out of that? Like, you know, higher loyalty contribution, more credit card revenues? You know, what's the ambitions with doing the loyalty program over? Second question. Paul, you mentioned that the guidance remains that gross CapEx could be as high as $350 million. I don't think you've spent that level of gross CapEx since you were a much more asset-heavy business, and it was only $100 million this year. So what could you spend that money on? Is that gonna be more recyclable investments? Is there more investment needed in the system funds? Maybe just explain what could get us to $350 million. And then the third question, I notice your single Six Senses in the Americas is just 20 rooms. I think it's in Brazil. Is there an opportunity for IHG and maybe wider brands to move into smaller hotels? And what is the? Does that expand your addressable market meaningfully? And what could possibly lead to you being able to move into smaller hotels via conversions, et cetera? Great. Thanks, Richard. Good to talk with you. I'll talk about loyalty and I'll talk about Six Senses and smaller, and then I'll let Paul talk about $350 million. As we got into the pandemic, you know, we were committed to saying, "How do we exit this a stronger company?" That was one of the rallying cries across the organization. Making the investments in technology, making the investments in growth, making the investments in the enterprise more broadly. We recognized that we could invest more to strengthen the loyalty offer for our customers and for our owners. Looking at, as loyalty continued to evolve and becoming more competitive, how do we take share? It's significant transformation of the loyalty program. As we said, initially it's a new tier and slightly different tier structures, but basically it's gonna be a richer offer for our customers. It's gonna be with more personalization and increased benefits, which will close some of the competitive gaps or create some areas of competitive advantage for us. From that increased loyalty contribution, more revenues to owners, better credit card fees, reducing costs and better returns. We think that it's really the biggest thing we will have done to this loyalty program since we invented loyalty for this industry. I'm really excited about that opportunity. I'll let Paul talk about capital, then I'll come back and talk about Six Senses. Yeah. Thanks, Richard. In terms of the CapEx, as you say, this year, CapEx was a positive for us. We've always talked about gross CapEx potentially being up to $350 million, but the components within that, being the key money and maintenance capital, which is what is permanently deployed into the business. That could be around the $150 million mark. Obviously much lower this year. And then recyclable investments and system fund CapEx, both of which do come back over time, so they are a temporary use of cash in the business only. We've seen that in the results this year, both of those being a net positive for us. I think that's all been demonstrated. What would you have to see? Well, you'd have to see a much higher level of openings, so more key money being deployed. You'd have to see opportunities for us to invest that recyclable money, so on a new brand or a really great opportunity to expand one of our new brands might mean that we might buy a hotel or invest in a joint venture or something somewhere. You'd have to see more money going out from the system fund. That would be the growth and how you could get up to GBP 350 million. Excellent. Thanks, Paul. Six Senses. I think, let me start by saying first, we're thrilled with the acquisition and the brand. To say I have been pleasantly surprised, bordering on amazed at the demand for this brand throughout the pandemic. The level of owner engagement to wanna be at the high end of luxury, to be in resorts, actually felt like it accelerated through 2021 versus slowed down. The number of inquiries that we have for incredible destinations, great hotels, and these are high fee earning resorts. You know, as you pointed out, you can have an 80-room hotel paying you $1 million a year easily. We're gonna continue to look to expand that and accelerate that in the Americas. I mean, the history, the legacy of the brand is Asia, and now it's moved into Europe, and now we're building that out into the Americas. We truly see this being a global brand, and scaling up quite quickly. We think there are plans for potentially eight or nine openings this year alone, and that being at a pace to continue to accelerate going forward as we expand our development footprint. It's great we can get into our smaller hotels. Some of our other brands can convert smaller hotels as well, which is appropriate, but we wanna make sure if we're in small hotels that they're high fee income hotels too, and make sure that we get the value from it. Okay. Great. Thanks very much. Thanks, Richard. The next question comes from Jaafar Mestari at BNP Paribas. Jaafar, please go ahead. Hi. Morning, everyone. I've got two, if that's okay. First, just on pricing. I'm curious, in your discussions with owners, do you have a sense of how much of the pricing they've been pushing is opportunistic, the strong demand in some windows, fixed supply that's here to stay? And in contrast, how much is reactive pricing, passing on dollar cost inflation and, you know, ultimately if the inflation outlook changes, this second lever possibly goes away? I think in H1 you said it was largely cost inflation, so if that's evolved. Then on net new openings, I'm just trying to piece together the different timelines and targets. You're now referencing pre-pandemic net new openings of 4.8% and 5.6%. Also separately you're still bringing up the opportunity to do industry leading which, if I'm correct, pre-pandemic was a touch higher than that. From your comments today, are you saying that there's basically one more transition year in 2022, and then 2023 could be 4.5% like 2018, 2019. But then beyond that from 2024, do you still wanna eventually do 6%, which was the end game pre-COVID? Would that sequence make sense? Great. Well, thank you very much, Jaafar. I think pricing, I think there's a combination of factors going on in pricing. We've done quite a bit in terms of our pricing simplification and our revenue management systems to enable owners to price more aggressively. Not to get too technical, but we've built out a lot of things in the back end to make sure that what happened during the pandemic doesn't negatively impact pricing. We really make sure we're leveraging our new demand algorithms to make sure we really price aggress- I say there's two aspects to it. In some markets, demand has increased so much, it's not defensive pricing, it's basically fundamental supply and demand. Basically, owners are pricing to maximize the performance in their hotels, given what the demand is for those assets. Remember, 50% of our hotels are at or above 2019 levels already, and we've continued to see ADR hold very, very strongly, much more so than anyone ever believed once the pandemic started. There is also some defensive pricing going on, where demand hasn't completely returned to some markets, but owners are pricing in order to make sure they're making up for the supply chain impacts and cost inflation too. I think there's proactive pricing, and I think there's defensive pricing going on, all of which is helping us maintain ADR and grow ADR, which is really a positive for IHG and for our owners. In terms of the question on what our aspirations are going forward around net system size growth. You know, we've said for some time that we want to be industry-leading. If you go back to 2019, for example, and you look at the openings and then you look at the removals, well, we actually led the industry in terms of openings. Nobody opened as many rooms as us on a percentage basis. We had more removals back then because we hadn't been through the Holiday Inn and Crowne Plaza program, which is going forward, gonna take our removals down to that 1.5% level. Had we been in that 1.5% level, we would have beaten everybody back in 2019. As we move forward, what we think is that 2022 will look more like 2018, and then going forward, more like 2019 and going forward from there. It is the component of how many rooms we open and how many rooms we remove. I think we're very well-placed. All right. Thanks for that. Thank you. Thank you, Paul. The next question comes from Tim Barrett at Numis. Tim, please go ahead. Hi, morning, both of you. Just two things, please. Firstly, thinking about the dividend, if I'm right, it's just above $150 million in quantum. Just interested in what you're solving for on that decision, and whether it's an EPS payout or more to do with leverage. Second question, forgive me, it's slightly devil's advocate, but on removals, 1.5%, there might be an argument to say there's always gonna be a tail. Just really, why would you exclude the Holiday Inn and Crowne Plaza elements from that? Thanks very much. Thanks, Tim. Well, in terms of the dividend, what we've said is that we are basically putting back the 2019 final dividend that we weren't able to pay because of the pandemic. You know, we were one of the first companies to say, "We're going to withdraw this," because we had to protect liquidity at the time. Now with the high level of cash flow that we've generated this year, $571 million of free cash flow, and coming back, you know, very importantly, to leverage of only 3x net debt to EBITDA, we think it's the right time to reinstate the dividend. Going forward, you know, we'll continue to pay dividends and further return to capital as we have over the last 20 years or so. In terms of the removals, we're not just to be clear, we're not saying there aren't gonna be any Holiday Inn or Crowne Plaza removals going forward. It's just that they're gonna be at the normal level. Across our all our other brands over the last say five years, it's been at 1.5%. We're saying that Holiday Inn and Crowne Plaza we would be removing 1.5% or so. There'll be some blending across all the brands, but it gets to overall that sort of 1.5%. Not that no Holiday Inns and Crowne Plazas are gonna be removed going forward. Okay. That's great. Thank you. Thanks, Tim. The next question comes from Ivor Jones at Peel Hunt. Ivor, please go ahead. Oh, good morning. Four quick things. On distribution channels, has anything interesting happened in this period of recovery, particularly in relation to OTAs within the mix, or just generally in relation to distribution? Secondly, I guess the tail end of the year is less business heavy than the rest of the year. When do you think through 2022 you'll be able to say more confidently or the level to which business is recovering given the change in business practices? When do you get to a business heavy month when you'll be able to make a comparison? Thirdly, just in relation to the contribution of luxury and lifestyle growth, looking out a couple of years, is this gonna be a significant driver of additional room nights through the loyalty program? Is 50% of room nights remembered the right number or with a luxury branding expanded, you get to 75%? Does that have a material effect on margin that we should be thinking about? Is that a second order payback on luxury and lifestyle? Lastly, Paul, you might have mentioned this already, but if there was a flow in from system funds in terms of cash flow in 2021, is there a flowing out in 2022, or do we get to neutrality in 2022? I didn't quite understand the balance of those flows. Thank you. Well, thank you. I'll talk a little bit about distribution. Candidly, it's still pretty noisy in terms of distribution and where the contribution is coming from, 'cause the recovery is happening at different rates at different parts of the world. In areas where we have seen a full recovery and you're seeing more business travel, you're seeing much more of a normalization to our traditional distribution contributions. In markets where it's been much more leisure-oriented, you are seeing an increase in some of the OTAs, because again, those are infrequent leisure customers, and you're seeing decreases in things like GDS. Overall, we're beginning to see a normalization back to where we were pre-pandemic, and we'll have probably more clarity on where distribution lands through 2022 as more things begin to open up. Because again, you remember, some markets today are at 2019 levels. We have some markets that are still down 70% to 2019 levels and everywhere in between too. So there's a lot of noise in distribution. What was interesting is we saw, you know, a lot more coming to the hotels directly, which was an interesting trend. And we saw, again, continued strong loyalty contribution overall. I think in terms of the business-heavy month, I mean, as spring progresses, business travel picks up. I mean, January and February are lighter months and industry-wide, you know, Omicron has definitely been a bit of a headwind. You can see that in the data in terms of it was, you know, business travel was accelerating into December. Industry-wide, January, February has been softer, but we believe come spring, you're gonna see business travel begin to normalize on top of that strong leisure travel as well, too. At the back end of the year when you get very business-heavy, kind of that September, October, November timeframe is when you really see us being back to probably normal levels. In terms of luxury and lifestyle, I mean, it's a growing part of our business. It's an incredibly highly lucrative fee income from each asset. It also helps the loyalty program, but it, they're all interconnected, right? The investments we're making in loyalty actually make it more appealing to a luxury and lifestyle customer as well as a mainstream customer. By having more luxury and lifestyle hotels, your program is more attractive as well, too. We would expect to see loyalty contribution continue to accelerate. Remember, in the previous years pre-pandemic, we raised loyalty contribution seven points. We showed that we were strengthening the program throughout. The whole industry saw loyalty contribution fall in 2020 and 2021, and we would expect now, you know, new program in 2022, landing that into 2023 forward acceleration of loyalty contribution in luxury and lifestyle and in our mainstream brands as well. In terms of the system fund and how the cash flows there work, I think the key thing is that we run the system fund effectively on a cash neutral basis over time, so that some years there may be a small inflow, some years there may be a small outflow. In 2020, to make sure we were sort of supporting our owners as well as we could, although what was coming in was much reduced, we did continue to spend to invest behind marketing and everything that would put as much income as possible into our owners' hotels. That was the right thing to do. Then some of that flows back to us this year. So there has been an inflow, but you know, broadly, it's net neutral over time. What do you expect for this year? Sorry, Paul. Well, it will depend on the pace through the year. No guidance right now. I think we've sort of caught up on what we saw in the outflows in 2021 numbers. Going forward, we expect it to broadly neutral over time. If we were to see an inflow in this year, another inflow, then we might spend more in the following year. It's always a little difficult to predict exactly how much money is gonna come in and then how much money you're spending on your marketing. What we try and, as I say, make sure we're doing is putting anything that's surplus back into the system fund to drive even more demand in a future year. That's great. Thank you. Thanks, Ivor. The next question comes from Alex Brignall at Redburn. Alex, please go ahead. Morning, guys. Thanks for taking the question. Just to clarify, Chris. On the business travel assumptions, you sort of alluded to the RevPAR expectations for back to normal in 2023. I'm just wondering what the business expectations are within that. I ask because I saw a presentation from Amex GBT, which is pretty much the biggest business travel agency. They expect business travel to get back to 70% of pre-pandemic levels, which seems a little different to what you might be forecasting. There's a big difference, obviously, between sort of total office attendance and total workplace attendance, and you're exposed a little bit differently to both. Just your thoughts there would be really helpful. On the distribution channel mix, you just made a really interesting comment about the hotel directs going up during the pandemic. Could you just talk, you know, regardless as to whether it's OTA or your own website, but what's happening to the sort of online/offline mix? Because that seems like a bit of a sort of anomaly for the pandemic period. Is it going back to sort of pre-pandemic trends in terms of movements from offline to online? Thanks so much. Thanks, Alex. Yeah, in terms of business travel assumptions, I think there's a couple of things we have to remember. On the mix, our mix of business by having a large mainstream portfolio and an extended stay portfolio, a good portion of that is what we call the, you know, essential business travel. We saw that throughout the pandemic. If you remember back in the depths of 2020, when things were at their worst, we were still running 40%+ occupancy in Holiday Inn Express and over 60% occupancy in our extended stay brands because of that essential business travel. Then on top of that, then you push out that discretionary business travel, groups, meetings, and events. I think what Amex is talking about is much more about that discretionary business travel, people who basically don't have to travel to do their job. Because we're already above 70% materially in terms of business travel overall, too. Will it be back to 100% in this year? No, we don't believe so. Again, I think it is showing that continued recovery quarter- by- quarter, and it's also being made up by incremental leisure travel. Also, and I'll give you an interesting anecdote. I mean, I was talking to one of the biggest services firms in the world last week. They were talking about having their partner meeting over in Europe. Gonna be 3,000 people getting together. And this goes back to a comment I made earlier saying, people are saying, fewer flights but more room nights in this business leisure mix. They go, "We're bringing all of our partners together for four days to a European capital city, three days of meetings, and then we're letting everybody stay over one day on the company for a leisure day." It's an interesting dynamic there. Is that a work trip or is it a leisure trip? It's a bit of both. I think you're gonna see more of that. Plus, we're hearing from people now that because their offices are smaller and people are working in hybrid working, they're going, "We actually have to get teams together in different ways," and hotels are a great utilization of that space for small gatherings and small meetings, too. I think our business recovery will be ahead of what Amex is forecasting because the makeup of our brand portfolio in travel. In terms of distribution channels, I think they're gonna revert back to normal. I mean, again, the pandemic basically created a very strange distribution relationship where people were basically booking on the day in a car someplace versus through digital channels. We're seeing our digital contribution already begin to go up. Our launching of our new mobile app is gonna be pretty cutting edge in terms of its ease to book and its functionality and plus the increased ability of GRS to deliver search. We think digital is gonna be the future, and it's definitely trending back in that direction. Thank you. If I could just ask one sort of follow-up on the first question. I guess the core kind of assumption then comes down to, is it possible for your sort of demographic and your hotels to return to previous RevPAR assumptions while, you know, higher end, more urban hotels stay meaningfully below? I guess I'm just thinking about the trickle-down economics of pricing. If high-end hotels lose demand, it feels to me like they'd cut price, and then it might come down to you. But I could be completely off on that. I think the nature of the recovery will just vary. Urban centers are already beginning to recover, but some are recovering at different paces. We're already seeing it. You know, I was in London last week and talking to the teams, and you could see how busy March and April were going to be versus what January and February were, business travelers and so forth. I'm quite confident that the urban markets are gonna recover. There will be a few outliers on this without question. They are dependent upon, again, more of that international. Going back to what I said in the presentation, there's still restrictions. There's still challenges in on international business travel, and those go into the key gateway cities. As those get lifted is when you'll see it begin to come back as well, too. It's just gonna lag, but not be structurally damaged. Brilliant. Thank you. Thank you, Alex. We have no further questions registered, but for any last final ones, it's star one. All right. We have one question come through. Do you have time to take it? Yes. Last question. Last question comes from Ian Iserton. He's an individual shareholder. Please go ahead. Thank you. My question's away from the financials, and it's actually referring to your penultimate slide when you talked about people and your diversity programs and recruiting diverse talent. I wonder if you could briefly say a bit more about how those diversity programs might differ around the globe. I'm particularly interested in whether you're doing anything around neurodiversity. I focus on finding ways to get autistic people recruited into organizations, and I wonder whether that's something that's on your agenda at all. Thank you very much. Yeah. No, our Journey to Tomorrow commitments for 2030, the people aspect's a huge component of it. I think to your first point, diversity is different around the world. Having lived on many parts of this world, in Asia and Europe and in the U.S., we consciously try not to have a one-size-fits-all approach. We look actually what's happening in the markets and what's the right focus we wanna have. For example, 12, 13 years ago, we focused on localization in China because our China business, which is our fastest-growing, was being run principally by foreign nationals, by expatriates. Today you go there, it's run principally by Chinese nationals. We're focusing on bringing women into the workforce in the Middle East. We're definitely focusing on our African American and Black community in the U.S. It's where do we have what we call hotspots of where do we need to be leaning into. That's gender representation, it's LGBTQ, it's ethnic representation and localization. We actually have a number of programs focusing on bringing individuals who have either physical disabilities or mental disabilities or challenges in the Middle East, actually in Southeast Asia, we've been working on inclusion in Singapore in particular. Thank you, Ian. Thank you. Excellent. We have no- Well, thanks, everyone. It's been great to connect with you all again. We're really pleased with how the year's turned out, and the team have done an excellent job to position us to accelerate our growth in 2022 and 2023. Our next market communication will be our Q1 trading update on the sixth of May. Thanks for your time and your interest in IHG, and look forward to catching up with you all soon. Take care. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.