China’s real estate giant Wanda Group unveiled its mid-range hotel brand Wanda Moments on November 30.
Wanda Hotels & Resorts has been heading towards being asset-light following a blockbuster deal in July last year that changed its asset portfolio. it introduced its fifth hotel brand Wanda Moments to venture into the mid-range hotel market according to plan.
In July 2017, cash-strapped Wanda Group agreed to sell 76 hotels for 33.595 billion yuan and a 91% stake in 13 cultural tourism projects to Sunac China Holdings Ltd. R&F Properties quickly snapped up 73 of the hotels for only 18.955 billion yuan from Sunac.
In 2012, the property titan established Wanda Hotel Management and Wanda Hotel Design, and later formed a brand structure comprising four luxury high-end brands – Wanda Reign, Wanda Vista, Wanda Realm and Wanda Jin. Its contracted hotels were soon passed on to Wanda Hotel Management.
As of November 2018, Wanda Hotel Management has signed contracts with 103 hotels in 81 cities across the country, of which 68 hotels in more than 50 cities are currently in operation.
After the sale of hotel assets in July 2017, Wanda Hotel Design, Wanda Hotel Construction and Wanda Hotel Management have been merged to form Wanda Hotels & Resorts, according to Mr. Mengchao Chen, Vice President of Wanda Hotels & Resorts.
The new entity can manage and operate hotels, as well as integrate the entire industry chain from development to operation, by sharing R&D, customers, procurement and IT systems. Mr. Chen believed it was the most distinctive and competitive feature that set Wanda apart from other hotel management companies.
Mr. Chen also said that it would be easy for Wanda Moments to roll out to the market thanks to its strong cost management and control capabilities and reasonable investment threshold, and that it had already drawn a pool of customers interested in the concept, even though it had no physical hotels yet.
Mr. Qifeng Ning, President of Wanda Hotels & Resorts, signed with six property owners on November 30 with a pipeline of six hotels to debut next year. “We’re expecting 700 Wanda Moments hotels nationwide in four to five years”, he said.
