Chinese hotel firm H World Group, formerly Huazhu, has sold its remaining stake in France-based global hotel company Accor.
According to a news release, H World Group has sold its 3.7% stake in Accor for an undisclosed sum to concentrate on its core activities. Accor’s current market capitalization is 8.1 billion euros ($8.6 billion).
The news comes a little more than a month since Accor sold its remaining 3% stake in H World for $460 million.
Accor said its move will help it further simplify its balance sheet and finalize the value creation of the investment initiated in 2016.
Neither company now owns a stake in the other, but both sides have made it clear they intend to continue working together to open and operate hotels.
At the end of 2022, Accor and H World Group operated 468 hotels in China under this agreement, with 143 properties in the pipeline scheduled to open over the next few years.
Accor signed an alliance deal with H World in 2016 when the Chinese company was known as China Lodging Group.
In that deal, Accor acquired a 10.8% stake in H World and a seat on its board.
H World, in turn, became the master franchisee for Accor brands Ibis, Ibis Styles and Mercure in China, Mongolia and Taiwan, while the French firm’s Grand Mercure and Novotel brands were to be developed and operated by both Accor and H World under a co-development agreement.
H World also appointed two seats of the five on the joint venture’s board and took a non-controlling stake of 29.3% in Accor’s luxury and upscale division in Greater China.
Accor manages 5,445 hotels and 802,269 rooms, with a pipeline of 1,247 hotels and approximately 216,000 rooms in development.
H World Group, as of its full-year 2022 earnings report, published on March 31, operates 8,543 hotels with 809,478 rooms and has a pipeline of more than 2,500 hotels across 31 in-house and third-party brands. More than 70% are in the economy segment, and of those hotels more than 93% are franchised or managed and franchised.