Crowne Plaza Hotel

Crowne Plaza Hotels & Resorts

Type	Upscale Hotels & Resorts
Industry	Hotel
Founded	1983
Founder	InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG)
Headquarters	Global
Number of locations	404
Area served	Global
Parent	InterContinental Hotels Group
Website	Crown Plaza online

Crowne Plaza is a chain of full service, upscale hotels catering to business travelers and to the meetings and conventions market. It forms part of the InterContinental Hotels Group family of brands, which include InterContinental Hotels & Resorts and Holiday Inn Hotels & Resorts, and operates in 52 countries with more than 400 hotels, usually located in city centers, resorts, coastal towns or near major airports.

Originally branded as "Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza", the first United States Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza Hotel was opened in Rockville, Maryland, in 1983. Within a couple of years the brand was spun off as an independent chain (still owned at the time by Holiday Inn). The first Crowne Plaza Resort opened in Madeira, Portugal, in 1999.

Today, the brand represents 404 hotels globally in 52 countries with 112,317 rooms (as of March 2016) and an expanding 81 hotels in the pipeline. In 1990, the InterContinental Hotels Group purchased the Holiday Inn family; today its portfolio includes the luxury brand InterContinental Hotels & Resorts, the upscale boutique brand Hotel Indigo, the upscale extended stay brand Staybridge Suites, the midscale extended stay brand Candlewood Suites, the midscale, full service brand Holiday Inn Hotels & Resorts, Holiday Inn Club Vacations, EVEN Hotels, HUALUXE Hotels & Resorts, and the midscale limited service brand Holiday Inn Express.

Crowne Plaza Hotels & Resorts is the title sponsor of the Crowne Plaza Invitational at Colonial - a PGA Tour golf tournament held annually in Fort Worth, Texas. Starting in 2012, they are also officially sponsoring PGA Tour's 2010's Rookie of the Year, Rickie Fowler.

Crowne Plaza Hotels & Resorts have been the sponsor of the British FIA World Touring Car Championship driver Andy Priaulx, a multiple touring car champion, since 2006. They now continue to support him in the Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters (DTM), a popular European touring car championship, as an official sponsor of BMW Motorsport along with the American LeMans Series (ALMS) where Californian Joey Hand represents the brand for both series.