[photopress:bollenbach.jpg,full,alignright]Hilton US and Hilton in Britain have merged. It was a $8.2 billion merger. Now, Steve Bollenbach, co-chairman and chief executive of the Beverly Hills-based group, who has recently returned from a 10-day trip to China, said development staff were now in place and new staff would be added to its presence there.
He said Hilton would find ‘probably more than one partner in China’.
The potential was ‘so big’, but only very few hotel players ‘could play in this game’, Mr Bollenbach said. Demand was such that achieving large-scale hotel deals in the Chinese market would be ‘relatively straightforward’.
Well, yes. But Hilton has taken a long time getting its act together. The merger happened last December. It is, admittedly, a giant with 2,800 hotels in 80 countries with perhaps another 70 in the pipeline.
Hilton, aiming for growth of 7 per cent a year across the group, will have China as one of the main centers of international expansion. The probability is that it will do deals in clumps of, say, 20 to 30 rather than on an individual basis.
Source: The Australian
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