Has China's state-owned Jin Jiang group become the second largest hotel chain?

As the debt-laden HNA group continues its selling spree, they sold another large hotel chain Radisson Hotels, formerly known as Carlson Hotels, to Jin Jiang (or Jinjiang) International for an undisclosed amount. Reports indicate the value could be more than $2 billion. Jin Jiang International is a state-owned hospitality company that owns Jin Jiang Hotels, Louvre Hotels Group and Plateno Group (7Day Inn).

The Bloomberg article linked above (published on Skift) writes that "The purchase would make Jin Jiang the seventh-biggest hotel company in the world, with 344,000 rooms, according to lodging-data provider STR." However, this seems to only take account of Jin Jiang and Radisson only. Jin Jiang owns, manages and franchises 143,338 rooms in operation as of 12/31/2017, and Radisson had 188,013 rooms as of 2016. 

If we include all Jin Jiang group hotels, which include Jin Jiang, Louvre, Plateno and Vienna, the number becomes 680,000. This allows Jin Jiang to be the fifth largest hotel chain in the world after Wyndham.

Source: https://www.chinatravelnews.com/article/123244

If we add this number with Radisson's room count, the combined company will have 868,013 rooms in total. Then Jin Jiang becomes the second largest hotel chain in the world, marginally surpassing Hilton's 856,115 rooms.

This is the largest deal in the hospitality space after Marriott-Starwood merger. Sure, I will take it with a grain of salt--while the Marriwood is a single hotel chain with a combined operation, the Jin Jiang sub-brands are more independent to each other. Louvre and Plateno are not in the same loyalty program, have a separate management, for example.

But anyway, Jin Jiang will indeed control the second most rooms in the world if the deal closes. I think this deal should attract much more attention than it does currently. We are witnessing the born of the new Chinese hotel giant.

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