According to the journal China Travel News, Plateno Group and Jin Jiang Hotels were preparing to sign a merger agreement for their two companies, while keeping operations independent. The two actors would thus be on the point of creating the biggest group of hotels in China with a total of some 475,000 rooms operating or under development, including close to 298,000 for Plateno and 177,000 for Jin Jiang.

Together the two groups would foresee a major operation on the international hotel market. They are said to be studying the possibility of buying Starwood Hotels & Resorts, which would allow them to become the biggest hotel group worldwide.

It will be recalled that the American group had raised questions about its future further to the publication of a press release in which the president of the board of directors, Bruce W. Duncan, had announced that it had called upon the Lazard bank to elaborate a strategic plan without excluding any option, including a merger with another hotel group (read our analysis on the matter).

As of January 1, 2015, Jin Jiang (241,908 rooms operating, including those of the Louvre Hotels group taken over in 2015) and Plateno (190,000 rooms operating) occupied the 10th and 12th places in the global ranking of hotel groups in terms of rooms operating, realised each year by MKG Hospitality, while Starwood Hotels & Resorts (346,599 rooms) ranked 7th (Read our report). Together they would have a total of 778,507 open hotel rooms (and more than a million with their respective pipelines) and take first place in the worldwide ranking ahead of IHG.