ATLANTA—InterContinental Hotels Group has signed a franchise agreement with Foremost Hospitality GmbH to introduce 20 new Holiday Inn and Holiday Inn Express properties across that country’s key cities by 2016. Karl-Heinz Pawlizki, IHG’s director of operations, Germany, said: “As IHG’s sixth biggest market globally by number of rooms and seventh by hotels, Germany remains a priority market for us and Foremost Hospitality an important strategic partner. Of the 20 properties within the agreement, seven hotel contracts are already signed and development under way. These include the November signing of two additional hotel contracts; the 328-room Holiday Inn Berlin City Centre- Potsdamer Platz, expected to open March 2011, and the 150-room Holiday Inn Express Berlin City Centre-Alexander Platz, scheduled to open March 2010. There currently are 55 hotels operating under the Holiday Inn brand family in Germany, of which 41 are Holiday Inn and 14 are Express by Holiday Inn properties. As of September 2008 Germany’s pipeline of signed deals was three Holiday Inn and nine Holiday Inn Express properties, which includes five signed deals with Foremost Hospitality. Foremost currently operates three IHG-branded flags, of which two are in Germany (the 158-room Express by Holiday Inn Berlin City Centre-West and 150-room Express by Holiday Inn Munich Airport) and one in the United Kingdom (the 128-room Express by Holiday Inn Hull City Centre). The company previously operated a further three Express by Holiday Inn hotels in the UK, which were sold in 2005 to allow Foremost to concentrate its attention on expanding its activities in Germany.