The Olympic host city of London served as host to Worldhotels’ 2012 annual conference, which rang in a new year for a record number of nearly 400 independent hoteliers, staff and hotel specialists from all over the world.

The conference was themed ‘Stronger, Faster, Higher’ and held at the Royal Garden Hotel, which provided its conference and meeting space as well as 350 of its rooms exclusively for the event.

Managing director Robert Hornman (pictured above) presented the group’s strategy for 2012, which focuses on achieving faster distribution, higher sales and stronger marketing.

During the plenary sessions as well as several workshops, the group delivered various initiatives and resources for the Worldhotels affiliates, among them achieving higher online conversion, strengthening guest loyalty via Social Media and creating meaningful brand experiences.

Guest speakers included Olympic gold medalist Ben Hunt-Davis, brand specialist Karthik Siva, BBC presenter Rajan Datar and senior panellists from TripAdvisor, Google Travel, Frommer’s Unlimited and Trust.

The group also took the time to celebrate a very successful year 2011 which brought 70 new hotels, a 20 per cent increase in room night production from the previous year and the implementation of several successful initiatives, such as Spider by Worldhotels, a complete package of online solutions as well as OTA360°, an OTA management system.

Established in 1971, the Worldhotels Annual Conference has become invaluable to the group’s hotels by not only providing local and global market travel industry updates and insights into market trends, but also offering opportunities and solutions.

Worldhotels currently represents almost 500 hotels in 250 destinations across 65 countries worldwide.