The French Accor, the sixth largest hotel group in the world, announced Thursday that 200 of its hotels in China and Hong Kong had a shutdown activity due to the coronavirus epidemic, which however has only a marginal impact on his income at this point. " We have practically no activity in our hotels in China, " said his deputy general manager, Jean-Jacques Morin, when presenting the group's results in 2019 during a conference call.
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Mainland China, Hong Kong and Macao, however, account for only 3% of Accor's overall turnover, he said. And the epidemic has caused " to date only 5 million euros in absence of royalties " for the group - which collects revenues from establishments but does not own the walls most of the time -, said CEO Sébastien Bazin Thursday morning on BFMTV. " It's not much at the moment, " he said. Thus, 200 hotels out of a total of 370 in the area are " closed for reservation ": one " sixty " actually keeps doors closed, said Sébastien Bazin, and the others " have almost no customers, but the Chinese government has not yet officially approved their closure , ”a spokeswoman told AFP.
Hotels made available to the authorities
“ A large part of the closed hotels have been made available to the Chinese authorities to accompany them to house all the medical teams, to give food, for all those who work in hospitals. We are completely at the disposal of the Chinese government, we have been very very local for 47 years in China, "said the CEO of Accor.
Asia-Pacific generates a third of the group's activity, which has more than 5,000 hotels and generated more than 4 billion euros in turnover last year. However, activity in this geographic area has already suffered from Sino-American trade tensions last year, pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong and fires in Australia.
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Accor is now waiting for the “ turning point ” of the coronavirus epidemic to be able to judge the effect it will have on the hotel industry. " Nobody knows how long it will take to return to a normal situation ," said Jean-Jacques Morin, while welcoming " the extreme responsiveness of the Chinese government". China announced on Thursday a daily number of new cases of contamination coronavirus at its lowest level in nearly a month. The official death toll now exceeds 2,100 deaths.
