Luxury resorts and hotels developer Banyan Tree has completed a multi-hundred-million-dollar investment fund to finance its planned projects in China.
Singapore-based Banyan Tree, which has hotels from Thailand’s Phuket to China’s Lijiang, originally targeted raising $700 million for the China fund, said sources familiar with the situation.
‘We have plans to launch a fund to support our projects in China but have not officially launched it yet,’ a Banyan Tree spokeswoman said in response to Reuters inquiry.
One industry source said Banyan Tree raised at least $500 million for its China Development Fund, which will have an office in Shanghai, to support five or six hotel projects across China, including a new hotel in Tibet.
Reuters reports Banyan Tree now has three hotels in China — two in the southern province of Yunnan, including the one in Lijiang, and one on the tropical resort island of Hainan, often dubbed China’s Phuket.
Banyan Tree has said it plans to launch a new hotel in the eastern city of Hangzhou this year while two other planned projects in Macau, famous for its casinos, and Beijing may be delayed, according to its stock filings.