IHG Hotels & Resorts has acquired Ruby, a premium urban lifestyle brand with 20 hotels in Europe, for approximately $116 million.
Ruby's operating company, Ruby Group, isn't included in the acquisition and will continue to operate the brand's existing hotels as well as develop new properties under franchise agreements with IHG.
Founded in 2013, Munich-based Ruby has nine hotels in German cities, including Cologne, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Munich and Stuttgart. The brand also has three hotels in the U.K., three in Austria, two in Switzerland and one each in Italy, Ireland and the Netherlands.
According to IHG, the acquisition marks its foray into the growing "urban micro" hotel segment, characterized by space-saving designs in prime city locations, as well as "operational standardization and automation" in the form of self-service check-in kiosks and other efficiencies.
Other brands in the segment include Moxy, CitizenM, Freehand and Yotel.
"The urban micro space is a franchise-friendly model with attractive owner economics, and we see excellent opportunities to not only expand Ruby's strong European base but also rapidly take this exciting brand to the Americas and across Asia," said IHG CEO Elie Maalouf.
Ruby currently has 10 hotels in its pipeline across Europe, including upcoming openings in Edinburgh, Marseille, Rome and Stockholm.
IHG said it expects to have the brand ready for development in the U.S. by year's end and is targeting expansion to 120 hotels within the next decade and 250 over the next 20 years.
Ruby is IHG's 20th brand.