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Pedestrians walk past ANA Intercontinental hotel, one of the hotel chains of All Nippon Airways, in Tokyo April 13, 2007. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon

NEW YORK (Reuters) - InterContinental Hotels Group Plc (IHG.L: Quote, Profile, Research), the world's largest hotelier, wants to hire almost 50,000 people in the United States over the next three to five years.

"We need more workers -- we have significant growth in our pipeline," said Steve Porter, Americas president for InterContinental, in an interview.

InterContinental reported a 22 percent rise in first-quarter profit on Wednesday and said it was well placed for further growth despite an economic downturn.

The Britain-based company, which operates InterContinental, Crowne Plaza and Holiday Inn hotels, said it had seen little impact from the credit crunch on its ability to sign new deals.

The United States accounts for around 70 percent of group profits.

"We are opening basically a hotel a day, so if you extend that across the year, that's better than 300 general managers, better than 900 to 1,200 department heads and a significant number of hotel level line staff," said Porter. "So that's a lot of good jobs."

Porter said InterContinental's Americas business currently employs about 165,000 people between its hotels and corporate offices but it needs a lot more to cope with its ambitious growth plans.

"We are looking for 55,000 people to come to work for us, and that's just in the Americas," said Porter.

"The bulk of those are going to be in the United States, so probably 49,000 of those are going to be here in the U.S."

VISAS

InterContinental said on Wednesday it had 590,361 rooms in 3,983 hotels and a development pipeline of more than 1,700 hotels.

"We are ... in an industry that looks to be pretty resilient through the cycles -- people like to travel," said Porter.

"As we continue to shift to a service-based economy, this company is well-positioned to give people great job and career opportunities," he said.

In the first quarter alone, the company added 5,267 net new rooms, more than double the increase in the same period last year.

Underlying operating profit was 55 million pounds ($108 million) for the three months to March 31, up from 45 million pounds last year. The average profit forecast of five analysts polled by Reuters was 53.9 million pounds.

Continuing revenue climbed 15 percent to 226 million pounds.

One problem for InterContinental's hiring drive is the limit on U.S. visas for temporary foreign workers.

"We have got a pretty deep pool of available workers but still not enough to fill all the jobs," said Porter. "We do have a need for our government to sort out our temporary worker program."

(Editing by Tim Dobbyn)