China's Jin Jiang International, is looking to buy hotels in major European cities, including Paris, to expand its luxury portfolio, the chief executive of its Louvre Hotels Pierre-Frederic Roulot told Reuters on yesterday. Roulot, who oversees state-owned Jin Jiang's expansion in Europe, said the close ties with China enjoyed by Louvre Hotels had helped it to weather an overall decline in Chinese visitors to France in 2016 due to security fears. Jin Jiang's strength as a powerful tour operator is also helping when foreign tourists, notably from China, have avoided
France after a wave of militant Islamist attacks and repeated robberies against Asian tourists, Roulot said.
"There were 2.2 million Chinese visitors in France in 2015, this could fall to 1.8 million this year but we are seeing a rise of between 8 percent and 10 percent in nightly Chinese stay...We are less impacted than others," he said.
China has been the world's largest outbound tourism market since 2012, according to the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), with spending on travel abroad growing
double-digits in the first nine months of 2016. Louvre Hotels, which is the number two for budget hotels in Europe after France's AccorHotels, will also use its alliance with China's biggest bank card provider UnionPay to reach more of the growing number of Chinese travellers abroad.
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