While Marriott has just opened its 8,000th hotel in the world - quite a symbol, since this hotel is located right next to the group's future new headquarters in Bethesda, a suburb of Washington - the American group remains the world's leading hotel group with almost 1.5 million rooms. This is considerably more than Hilton and its one million rooms, and almost twice as many as Accor, which announced a hotel portfolio of almost 775,000 rooms at the end of last year.
With growth of 3.9 % last year, the world's leading hotel group continues to show strong growth momentum despite the crisis. Nearly 86,000 rooms will be added to its network by 2021, half of them outside France and a quarter from the conversion of existing hotels.
Same growth momentum among the world leaders
However, Marriott is far from being the only major hotel group to have expanded its offering over the last year. Hilton's room supply is expected to grow by 5.6 % in 2021, and Accor's by +3 %. with organic growth of 288 hotels, while Wyndhamwhose business model, like Choice Hotels, is based almost entirely on franchising, has announced growth of 2 %.
In this panorama, two groups - IHG and Hyatt - each stand out in their own way. The first, long the world's leading group before Marriott absorbed Starwood in 2016 and the Chinese group JinJiang made a name for itself in the sector, has for the last two years been a major player in the hotel sector. a degree of stability in its global network. Not that the British hotelier is not in the same dynamic as its competitors, since its gross growth has reached identical levels, at +5.0% compared with 2020. But its determination to strengthen the consistency and quality of two of its major brandsHoliday Inn and Crowne Plaza, which have been updating their establishments for several years now, have pushed out a number of hotels that are not in line with these improvement plans, particularly in the Atlantic region.
Of the 50,000 rooms, almost three-quarters were in establishments belonging to these two brands. This strategy is almost complete, IHG now intends to resume growth in its customer base at a rate close to 5 %. To return to these levels, the British group is counting on the attractiveness of Voco to convert more and more existing hotels to this brand, as well as the dynamism of Holiday Inn Express in the economy segment, and, in the luxury segment, the urban expansion of its resorts brand. Six Senses and the rise of Vignette Collection.
Offer from the world's largest groups at 31/12/2021Marriott : 7,897 hotels / 1,456,478 rooms |
As for Hyatt, although its offer does not rival that of the world's leading groups in terms of numbers, with "only" 285,000 rooms and just over 1,000 hotels, the quality of its top-of-the-range hotels makes it a major rival. This is all the more true given that the group has opened a record number of new hotels in 2021, thanks to the growth in its brands (+6.11TP3Q), but above all with the acquisition of the ALG group and its 99 AMR Collection resorts. Thanks to the acquisition of this leisure player, Hyatt's hotel portfolio has grown by almost 20%. "2021 was a year of transformation for our company"said Mark Hoplamazian, CEO of Hyatt Hotels Corporation, whose strategy targets three segments in particular: luxury, lifestyle and resorts. This has been achieved through in-house developments and acquisitions such as ALG and, in 2018, Two Roads Hospitality, parent company of the Alila brands, Joie de Vivre and ThompsonIn the space of four years, Hyatt will have doubled its luxury offering and tripled its share of resorts and lifestyle hotels.
Even before the pandemic, lifestyle hotels were already attracting interest from hotel groups, this segment is increasingly popular at a time when business travel is in full swing. Meeting the expectations of all travellers, whether leisure or business, this contemporary hotel also stands out for its lively bars and restaurants, making it attractive to local customers. The result is a greater capacity to generate revenue.
In this context, Accor, like Hyatt, is aligning its development strategy with this new trend. The constitution in 2021 of the Ennismore joint venturewhose ambition is to be the world's largest lifestyle hotel operator, should further accelerate this development. " Our pipeline has continued to grow, with our Luxury & Upscale segment now representing close to 40% of future openingsan increase of 12 points over the last four years" said Accor CEO Sébastien Bazin. At the end of December 2021, the French group was announcing plans for more than 1,200 hotels and forecasting net network growth of 3.5% for the current year.
The pandemic has in no way affected the growth capacity of the major hotel groups, especially as most of their projects were initiated before the crisis. At the presentation of its analysis of hotel industry results in 2021Olivier Petit, partner at In Extenso, noted a real dynamic in France, with a record number of openings in the regions in 2021 and significant prospects for new openingsThis is particularly true in Paris, where 6,000 new rooms are expected by 2022. However, we expect the pace of growth to slow in the coming years: "Hotels take several years to get off the ground, so we can expect a certain air gap in three or four years' time as a result of the pandemic." he explained.
A host of projects already underway
In the meantime, hoteliers have always well-stocked pipelines. Hilton has announced a pipeline of 2,670 hotels at the end of December, more than half of which are expected to be outside the United States as the American group enters 28 new territories. This represents a volume of rooms - 408,000 - close to that of Marriott, which has announced 2,831 hotels and 485,000 rooms in the pipeline. " With our momentum around hotel conversions and the largest pipeline in the sector, we are optimistic about our ability to grow our footprint over the next few years.said Anthony Capuano, CEO of Marriott. For 2022, we expect gross growth in the number of bedrooms to approach 5 %, with closures of between 1 and 1.5 %, resulting in net growth of between 3.51 % and 4 %.. " All the ingredients needed to consolidate its position as world leader for at least some time to come.
