According to the latest Construction Pipeline Trend Report from Lodging Econometrics (LE), the total China hotel construction pipeline stands at 3,693 projects/701,974 rooms. At the end of the second quarter, the country’s construction pipeline is slightly less than the all-time high of 3,711 projects/704,101 rooms set in the first quarter (2022) but is up 7 per cent by projects year-over-year (YOY) and 6 per cent YOY by rooms.
Projects presently under construction are at 2,581 projects/470,021 rooms, each up 7 per cent YOY, projects starting construction in the next 12 months are at 510 projects/97,607 rooms, and projects in the early planning stage are at 602 projects/134,346 rooms, up 21 per cent and 13 per cent YOY, respectively. These increases can be attributed to the record number of upper and upper midscale projects in the pipeline as well as new construction projects coming back online that were previously stalled in 2020 and 2021 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Despite economic uncertainty and a rocky real estate market, hotel construction in most major cities has resumed and is expected to continue through the end of the year and into 2023.
Chengdu leads China’s pipeline with 141 projects/28,573 rooms. Shanghai follows with 128 projects/25,200 rooms. Next is Guangzhou with 115 projects/25,420 rooms, Hangzhou with 101 projects/21,175 rooms, and Xi’an with 94 projects/17,169 rooms.
Franchise companies topping China’s construction pipeline in Q2 are Hilton Worldwide with project and room counts of 685 projects/125,252 rooms, a record high for both. Next is InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) with 443 projects/91,494 rooms, then Marriott International with 385 projects/102,832 rooms, Accor with 203 projects/37,478 rooms, and JinJiang Holdings follows with 190 projects/19,077 rooms. These five companies make up an impressive 52% of rooms in China’s total hotel construction pipeline.
The leading brands in the construction pipeline for each of these companies in Q2 2022 are Hilton’s Hampton by Hilton brand with 360 projects/54,148 rooms; IHG’s Holiday Inn Express with 189 projects/30,968 rooms; Marriott International’s full-service brand Marriott Hotel with 66 projects/20,147 rooms; Accor’s Ibis brand with 59 projects/6,178 rooms; and JinJiang Holding’s 7 Days Inn brand with 94 projects/7,370 rooms.
China’s new hotel openings in the first half of 2022 were 149 hotels/24,382 rooms with another 597 new hotels/85,627 rooms forecast to open by year-end. Should all these hotels open in 2022, then the country will open the greatest number of new hotel rooms since the peak in 2014. The LE forecast for new hotel openings in China for 2023 is for 822 new hotels with 130,529 rooms to open. In 2024, LE analysts forecast new hotel openings in China to reach 748 hotels with 138,058 rooms.
