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Fosun, China’s largest privately-owned conglomerate, has bought a 7 percent stake in French all-inclusive specialist Club Med.
The deal, valued at 23.4m euros on Friday’s closing share price, comes as part of Club Med’s strategy to seek partners to develop in new markets, including China’s burgeoning middle-class consumers. This would shift its reliance away from its stagnating numbers in Europe.
Some 30,000 Chinese tourists per annum stay at Club Med resorts, out of a total of 1.2 million. However the group has set its sights on making China the biggest source market after France, with a target of 200,000 customers by 2015.
It will open its first Chinese club – a ski resort in the mountains of north-west China at Yabuli – this autumn and hopes to have another five over the next five years.
Fosun will co-fund these developments, with one person close to the group quoted in the Financial Times saying, “the big reservoir of clients for Club Med is really China.”
TravelDailyNews Asia-Pacific editorial team has an experience of over 35 years in B2B travel journalism as well as in tourism & hospitality marketing and communications.
