Club Med owner Fosun Tourism says China recovery will help ease the pain as coronavirus shuts down European operations
- Company says occupancy at its Atlantis Sanya resort in Hainan province has recovered by around 50 per cent year on year when it reopened last week
- Europe’s largest ski resort operator is starting to temporarily shut down operations in Italy and France
Fosun Tourism Group, the owner of French resort chain Club Med, has said that its globalisation strategy is helping it to cope with the slump in its business. The Hong Kong-listed travel company has seen its operations in China slowly recover from the slump caused by the coronavirus outbreak even as the deadly disease continues to spread rapidly across the world, affecting its operations in its main market of Europe.
“Our resorts in Italy and France have started terminating operations temporarily as Covid-19 is widely spreading,” chairman and chief executive Qian Jiannong said on Wednesday after the company posted a near 100 per cent jump in annual profit.
He added it was too early to predict how Fosun’s operations would be hit, noting that the gradual resumption of travel in China would ease some pain.
“Our businesses in China were seriously hit since the end of January and we had zero revenue in February at the peak of the outbreak. However, we managed to see total revenues grow 8 per cent in the first two months, thanks to the business outside China,” said Qian in an interview with the South China Morning Post.
On Wednesday, the Shanghai-based tourism group said revenue grew 6.6 per cent year on year to 17.34 billion yuan (US$2.45 billion) for 2019, but much slower than the near 38 per cent growth in 2018. Net profit attributable to shareholders reached 609 million yuan, up 97.4 per cent year on year.