Last month, Sébastien Bazin, Chairman and CEO of Accor, unveiled the group’s expansion plan for Greater China. Over the next five to six years, Accor aims to expand its portfolio in the region from more than 830 hotels to 1,600.
A core pillar of Accor’s China strategy, as highlighted by Bazin, is deepening its presence in the midscale hotel segment. He also said that Accor will further strengthen its partnership with major Chinese hotel groups, including Jin Jiang, H World and Sunmei Hotels Group.
Accor is not the only international hotel group betting on China’s existing hotel stock. Marriott has recently introduced Series by Marriott to the Chinese market. Focused on the select-service segment and designed primarily for regional brands and independent hotels, the brand is expected to expand to 100 properties across China over the next decade.
IHG moved even earlier. In March this year, it introduced Garner, a conversion-friendly brand, to Greater China. The first property, Garner Beijing 798 Art District, is already open, while projects in Shanghai Lujiazui, Chongqing Jiefangbei, Hangzhou West Lake have also been signed.
Even Hyatt, which has traditionally focused on luxury and upscale brands in China, has partnered with Dossen to introduce its upper-midscale brand Hyatt Select brand to the country, with a development model that accommodates both new builds and hotel conversions.
Within just a few months, Accor, Marriott, IHG and Hyatt have all stepped up their expansion in China’s midscale hotel market. Well-located hotels with aging products have suddenly become hot targets for international brands.
The sudden enthusiasm among global hotel groups for converting and rebranding China’s older hotels comes down to a practical question of scale.
As China’s real estate boom cools, investment in new high-end hotels has not disappeared. But acquiring land, building a property and bringing it into operation can take several years, with projects often exposed to funding constraints, planning changes and construction delays.
Converting an existing hotel, by contrast, avoids much of that lengthy development cycle. A property that is already operating can adopt design upgrades, replace equipment and connect to the brand’s systems before reopening under a new flag within a much shorter timeframe.
Compared with building hotels from scratch, asset conversion and rebranding better align with international groups’ demand for rapid expansion in China.
The other side of the equation is that China happens to have a huge pool of aging hotels waiting to be upgraded.
According to the 2026 China Hotel Industry Development Report released by the China Hotel Association, by the end of 2025, China had 374,700 hotels with 18.74 million rooms. The hotel chain penetration rate stood at 41.8% by room count, but only 28.37% by property count.
That means, by a rough calculation, nearly 270,000 hotels in China remain outside any hotel chain.
