Europe’s biggest hotel company, Accor SA, has planned to more than double the number of its hotels in China in coming three years. The company is going to open its 44th hotel in China today. It has planned to open around 61 new hotels before 2010. It has about 300 hotels and plans to open 95 new ones in the next two years, mainly in China and India.
The Paris-based company operates hotels under the name Sofitel, Novotel and Mercure in major cities such as Shanghai, Macau, southern Guangzhou and eastern Nanjing. Estimates by World Travel and Tourism Council suggest that China’s travel and tourism industry is going to expand at the rate of 9.4 per cent annually.
