Roosevelt requested that Pan Am take the lead in developing 5000 hotel rooms in Latin America, with a projected cost of $50,000,000.

[4] Throughout 1946, company executives traveled to cities across Latin America on fact-finding trips to scout potential locations.

In early 1947, Pan Am decided that Intercontinental Hotels Corporation would more accurately reflect the chain's eventual global goals for expansion, and the company was renamed.

[4] The company signed its first lease that year, for the partially-completed Hotel Victoria Plaza in Montevideo, Uruguay.

The chain would continue to be unique among western hospitality companies in operating behind the "Iron Curtain", opening properties in Budapest, Bucharest, Prague and Warsaw between 1968 and 1974.

In its hotel designs, Intercontinental aspired to combine Mid-century modern American luxury with decorative elements drawn from local cultures.

[15] Facing significant financial losses,[16] Pan Am sold their profitable Inter-Continental Hotels division to Grand Metropolitan on 19 August 1981 for $500 million.

[17] Later in 1982, Inter-Continental formed a joint venture with Scanticon International, a Danish company that had opened a highly successful conference hotel near Princeton, New Jersey in 1981.

Additional Scanticon conference hotels were opened in Minneapolis and Denver, before InterContinental exited the joint venture in 1991.

Grand Metropolitan sold Inter-Continental Hotels to the Tokyo-based Seibu Saison Group on 1 October 1988 for $2.27 billion, for a profit of $850 million after taxes.

[20] In 2000, Bass sold its namesake brewing business, along with its name and red triangle trademark, to Interbrew, for £2.3 billion.