Holiday company Club Med, owned by Chinese group Fosun, plans to open 15 new resorts worldwide in the next three years, including one in China and one in Japan in 2017, and to upgrade nine of its existing sites.
In France alone, still Club Med’s biggest market, the group plans to open one new mountain village resort each year until 2019, Chief Executive Henri Giscard d’Estaing told a news conference.
“The club has resumed its march forward and is now accelerating,” Giscard said, reflecting a new optimism two years after the company was finally bought out.
Fosun Group, China’s largest private conglomerate, took control of Club Med in January 2015 after a fierce battle lasting nearly two years with Italian tycoon Andrea Bonomi, the longest takeover fight in French corporate history.
Club Med was seen as overly dependent on Europe, home to 70 per cent of its revenue and sluggish economic growth. Fosun offered it a chance to accelerate a strategy focused on moving further upmarket and expanding abroad, notably in the booming Chinese market.
Club Med now operates 68 holiday villages worldwide, with some 77 per cent of its resorts labelled premium or luxury compared with 55 per cent in 2010, when Fosun bought an initial 7 per cent stake in the company.