ANA, Japan's premiere airline and InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) began a joint venture, ANA InterContinental, in 2006, becoming the largest international hotel operator in Japan.

They now operate 32 hotels with over 9,000 rooms across four main brands — the five-star luxury InterContinental and the upscale ANA Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn and ANA Hotels. The merging of two separate corporate cultures created both challenges and opportunities. In the capable hands of CEO Fergus Stewart, who has been involved since the beginning as the former Regional General Manager of Greater Tokyo Area, IHG ANA Hotels Group Japan, the co-branding of a total of 25 hotels including ANA InterContinental Tokyo is a success story — not only financially, but also in showing how careful management and attention to cultural differences and detail can make a difference.

As Stewart explained: "I think in the initial stages there were a few lessons to be learned in working together as both companies have their own cultures. IHG has its hotel culture and ANA has its airline culture. [At] IHG, it wouldn't be uncommon for people to work for five or six different companies over a 20-year period, while a number of our former Japanese ANA Hotels colleagues were in the same company for 20 years. So, our cultures were quite different.