Summer 2026 Travel & Leisure Outlook webcast

Bob Chitty is Senior Vice President, Corporate Investment & Transactions, for the Americas region of IHG and is responsible for monitoring IHG’s capital investment in hotels, negotiating complex deal transactions, managing relationships with major equity and debt providers and M&A activity.

He most recently served as Senior Vice President, Corporate Finance and Upscale Development and was responsible for implementing IHG’s strategy of expanding rooms’ distribution, primarily of IHG’s upscale brands in North America, through joint ventures, debt financing, management and franchise agreements and other structures designed to minimize capital investment. Prior to that, Mr. Chitty was Vice President, Asset Disposal, for IHG, where he focused on executing IHG’s “asset light” strategy disposing of over $1 billion in hotel investments while maintaining long term management and franchise agreements.  He has also served as Vice President, Tax & Treasury, at IHG.

Before joining IHG in 1997, Mr. Chitty held positions at CSX Corporation and Arthur Young & Company. Mr. Chitty received his Bachelor of Business Administration in Accounting and his Master of Science in Taxation from Pace University and is a Certified Public Accountant.

Peter Gruppo is a Principal at KSL Capital Partners (“KSL”), a leading investment firm focused exclusively on travel and leisure with approximately $25 billion in assets under management. He has been with KSL since 2019 and focuses on private equity investments across the sector. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of Beckons, an ultra-luxury experiential hospitality platform and KSL portfolio company. Prior to KSL, Pete was in the Investment Banking Division at Morgan Stanley, working across the Real Estate and Financial Sponsors groups. He holds a B.A. in Economics from Middlebury College.

Tara Bustamante joins the newly combined IGT enterprise as Chief Transformation Officer, bringing her extensive experience in driving strategic change and creating value to the broader management and leadership team. Tara is responsible for spearheading organizational change initiatives, aligning strategies with business goals, and fostering innovation across divisions. Her leadership will play a pivotal role in achieving value creation, enhanced efficiencies, and long-term growth for the organization.

Prior to this role, Tara served as Group SVP for Global Business Transformation and Integration at Warner Bros. Discovery, where she successfully built and led high-impact transformation teams that delivered measurable business value through operational excellence, data-driven decision-making, and sustainable innovation. She has played a pivotal role in some of the media industry’s largest and most complex integrations, including transformation leadership for the $43 billion Discovery-Warner Media merger.

Tara’s career is marked by a consistent track record of building trusted advisory relationships across the C-suite, spearheading global reorganizations, and aligning enterprise programs with top-level strategic priorities. She has successfully led initiatives across diverse functions—including finance, HR, technology, and ad sales—and across every phase of the M&A lifecycle, including day-one readiness and post-merger integration.

Before joining Warner Bros. Discovery, Tara held senior roles at Marriott International, American Red Cross, and MCI/WorldCom, where she led initiatives in ecommerce, digital asset management, and supply chain logistics.

She holds an MS from Johns Hopkins University and a BA from Syracuse University.