H World Group Limited operates as a fast-growing multi-brand hotel group in China with international operations.
The company’s hotels are operated under three different models: leased and owned, franchised, and franchised hotels that it operates under management contracts, which the company refers to as ‘manachised.’
The company has various hotels in operation, including some leased and owned hotels and some manachised and franchised hotels. The company is developing some leased and owned hote...
H World Group Limited operates as a fast-growing multi-brand hotel group in China with international operations.
The company’s hotels are operated under three different models: leased and owned, franchised, and franchised hotels that it operates under management contracts, which the company refers to as ‘manachised.’
The company has various hotels in operation, including some leased and owned hotels and some manachised and franchised hotels. The company is developing some leased and owned hotels and some manachised and franchised hotels.
Leveraging the company’s consumer insights and its capability to deliver innovative and trend-setting products, the company operates a portfolio of over 20 distinct hotel brands.
The company has developed a vast base of loyal and engaged customers under its H Rewards loyalty program. H Rewards covers all the company’s brands and had more than 266 million members as of December 31, 2024. The company engages with program members through multiple online and offline touch points to personalize their lodging experiences and foster strong and long-lasting relationships that inspire loyalty to its brands. H Rewards is a powerful distribution platform, enabling the company to conduct lower-cost, targeted marketing campaigns and maintain a high percentage of direct sales to customers. In 2024, approximately 70% of the company’s room nights under legacy Huazhu were sold to customers who were individual or corporate H Rewards members. In the same year, approximately 75% of its room nights under legacy Huazhu were sold through the company’s own sales channels.
The company has developed industry-leading, proprietary technology infrastructure that enhances customer experience, increases its operational efficiency, and supports its fast growth. The core of this infrastructure is a comprehensive suite of modularized applications, including a cloud-based property management system and centralized reservation, procurement and revenue management systems. Leveraging the company’s operational experience and technological capabilities, it has built a centralized shared service center and realized the economies of scale made possible through the company’s sizable hotel operations.
Brands and Products
As of December 31, 2024, the company had hotels in operation or under development under the following brands, which are designed to target distinct segments of customers:
Economy hotel brands: HanTing Hotel, Ni Hao Hotel, Hi Inn, Elan Hotel, Zleep Hotels, and Ibis Hotel;
Midscale hotel brands: JI Hotel, Orange Hotel, Starway Hotel, and Ibis Styles Hotel;
Upper midscale hotel brands: Crystal Orange Hotel, IntercityHotel, Manxin Hotel, Mercure Hotel, Madison Hotel, Novotel Hotel, CitiGO Hotel, and MAXX;
Upscale hotel brands: Joya Hotel, Blossom House, Steigenberger Hotels & Resorts, Jaz in the City, and Grand Mercure Hotel; and
Luxury hotel brand: Steigenberger Icons and Song Hotels.
The company has entered into brand franchise agreements with Accor and enjoy exclusive franchise rights in respect of Mercure Hotel, Ibis Hotel, and Ibis Styles Hotel in the PRC, Taiwan, and Mongolia; and non-exclusive franchise rights in respect of Grand Mercure Hotel and Novotel Hotel in the PRC, Taiwan, and Mongolia. Through the company’s acquisition of Deutsche Hospitality, it has obtained exclusive rights to construct, operate, manage, franchise, and license hotels under the Jaz in the City brand in China, Southeast Asia, Japan, South Korea, and Europe subject to certain exceptions, and non-exclusive rights to operate, manage, franchise, and license certain number of hotels under the Jaz in the City brand in certain other countries and regions, such as Tunisia, Cape Verde, the United Arab Emirates (the ‘UAE’), and Egypt.
As of December 31, 2024, the company also operated some other hotels, including other partner hotels and other hotel brands in Yongle Huazhu Hotel & Resort Group (excluding Steigenberger Hotels & Resorts and Blossom House).
Economy Hotel Brands
HanTing Hotel
Launched in 2005, HanTing Hotel is the company’s starting brand and its economy hotel product. HanTing Hotels also include hotels the company previously marketed under the name of Hanting Premium Hotels.
Ni Hao Hotel
Ni Hao Hotel is the company’s economy hotel product targeting young customers. The brand-new Ni Hao Hotel 2.0 integrates contemporary aesthetics with traditional Chinese colors and symbols, creating a joyful and prosper atmosphere and offering traveler with various aesthetic choices.
Hi Inn
Launched in late 2008 and originally marketed under the name of HanTing Hi Inn, Hi Inn is the company’s high value-for-money budget hotel product committed to support self-help service.
Elan Hotel
In September 2014, the company launched Elan Hotel. Elan Hotel is its economy hotel product committed to improving the operating efficiency of individual micro, small- and medium-sized economy hotels.
Ibis Hotel
Ibis Hotel is the world’s leading economy hotel brand originated from France. Ibis Hotel breaks through the conventional monotonous atmosphere of economy hotels and creates a space without boundaries. Featuring it with front desk that also serves as bar, restaurant that turns into livehouse at night, and vibrant music setting the ambiance at any time, the company intends to transform economy hotel into a lively environment open for everyone.
Zleep Hotels
Zleep Hotels, the company’s economy hotel brand, is a well-known and successful hotel brand in Scandinavia and other parts of Europe offering service and design at a great rate.
Midscale Hotel Brands
JI Hotel
JI Hotel is a midscale brand that the company launched in 2010. Over the past 15 years, JI Hotel adheres to its original aspiration to ‘design for Chinese, offer experience to all.’ Drawing from oriental wisdom, humanity and culture, it offers quality lodging experience with friendly services, dedicating to providing travelers with accommodations that resonate with the aesthetics and lifestyle of Chinese people and sharing the unique Chinese lodging culture with guests from all over the world.
Orange Hotel
Orange Hotel, previously marketed under two brand names: Orange Hotel and Orange Select Hotel, is the company’s midscale hotel brand. Drawing inspiration from Orange County in California and having ‘bright sunny days’ as its brand concept, Orange Hotel creates a bright and memorable journey for travelers by creating sunny living spaces, offering vibrant and efficient services, and promoting a healthy lifestyle.
Starway Hotel
Starway Hotel is the company’s select midscale hotel brand. It offers a diverse range of products and quality lodging experiences, meanwhile merging the local characters and creates unique memories for the travelers. Through its thoughtful sleeping system, distinctive breakfast represented by Starway Hotel’s signature noodle, convenient smart facilities, laundry services and other ancillary services, Starway Hotel caters to customers’ diverse travel needs and conveys the unique charm of each city. Starway Hotel is committed to accompanying travelers along the way, helping them discover unexpected delights, and light up their journeys.
Ibis Styles Hotel
Ibis Styles Hotel is a midscale brand that offers comfortable and designer hotels. Ibis Styles Hotel advocates one-hotel-one-design, with each hotel choosing a different story theme to create creative spaces through a fun and premium design approach that is eye-catching. The different style collections of Ibis Styles Hotel can cater to the accommodation needs of different people, covering not only business and vacation, but also attracting the innovative Z-Generations.
Upper Midscale Hotel Brands
Crystal Orange Hotel
Crystal Orange Hotel is the company’s upper midscale hotel brand featuring boutique design hotels. As the company’s representative hotel brand with premium services, Crystal Orange Hotel stands as the ‘pinnacle of aesthetics.’ Its modern urban designs reflect the vibrant essence of contemporary life and offer a sense of sophistication that contemporary middle-class travelers would enjoy. It has won multiple international design awards from Switzerland, the United States, Japan, and other countries.
IntercityHotel
IntercityHotel is the company’s upper midscale urban hotel brand targeting business travelers. The hotels boast prime locations and utilize cutting-edge smart designs featuring high-quality amenities. Whether travel for business or leisure, IntercityHotel is the perfect starting point for the guests at any city they visit.
Manxin Hotel
Manxin Hotel was launched as an upper midscale brand of resorts in October 2013 and was previously branded as Manxin Hotel & Resorts. Manxin Hotel incorporates localized features into the design and experience and is a must-stay lifestyle hotel for urban exploration, with both business and travel features. Currently there are two product lines under Manxin Hotel, namely Manxin Hotel and Manxin Mansion.
Mercure Hotel
Mercure Hotel is an upper midscale hotel brand that focuses on local characteristics and adheres to consistent quality standards and vibrant hotel management philosophy. Whether located in the center of a city or in the countryside, Mercure Hotel offers authentic travel experience for business and leisure travelers. Mercure Hotel integrates the powerful international hotel network, professional and experienced hotel staff and digital technologies in its operations. Mercure Hotel also brings elegant lifestyle that infused with French romance, creating a diverse and colorful living space for its guests.
Madison Hotel
The company launched its new upper midscale hotel brands Madison Hotel and Grand Madison Hotel in 2019, which are committed to offering guests a classic lodging experience. In 2020, the company merged the Grand Madison Hotel brand into the Madison Hotel brand. Madison Hotel integrates local characteristics to create a warm and vibrant travel experience for the guests.
Novotel Hotel
Novotel is an upper midscale brand that provides a multi-service offering for both business and leisure guests, with spacious, modular rooms, 24/7 catering offers with balanced meals, meeting rooms, attentive and proactive staff, kid areas, multi-purpose lobbies and fitness centers.
CitiGO Hotel
CitiGO Hotel is a lifestyle brand that mainly targets young people. Crafted by internationally prestigious designers, CitiGO blends travel, sports and urban culture together to provide guests with unique lodging experience. CitiGO introduces a new concept space that combines elements of hotel, apartment and community, aiming to provide travelers with distinctive travel experience. With a focus on engaging different demographics, CitiGO emphasizes stylish and trendy designs along with rich and vibrant communal entertainment areas, breaking traditional perceptions of hotels. The hotel restaurant provides extra-long breakfast from 7:00 am to 12:00 pm, fresh coffee, craft beer and free late-night snack. CitiGO is passionate about cross-industry collaborations, embedding a youthful and playful attitude into its brand DNA, leading new travel trends for urban youth seeking quality life.
MAXX
MAXX is the company’s upper midscale hotel brand originated from Germany. MAXX inherits European elegance and style, redefining new luxury lifestyle through an international perspective and insights into the local market, serving as an urban oasis that captures every extraordinary moment, and integrates insights into the local market.
Upscale Hotel Brands
Joya Hotel
In December 2013, the company launched its upscale brand Joya Hotel. These hotels are typically located in areas close to major business and commercial districts in first- and second-tier cities. With the new Chinese-style design and diversified service features, Joya Hotel creates a hotel space more in line with the Chinese culture and lifestyle.
Blossom House
Blossom House, launched in Lijiang, China in 2009, previously branded Blossom Hill Hotels & Resorts, is the company’s upscale resort brand targeting affluent travelers. With the unique brand connotation of Chinese culture and regional culture and creativity, Blossom House hotels has created two resort types: Blossom House, the full-service resorts, each of which is irreplaceable and one-of-a-kind, and Blossom Collection, the selective personalized-themed resorts, which provide diverse and vibrant themed resort experience through a combination of innovative, multidimensional design of hotel products and site-specific attributes, natural scenery, regional culture, and themed settings of areas where the hotels are located.
Steigenberger Hotels & Resorts
Steigenberger Hotels & Resorts is the company’s upscale brand originated in Germany. With high-quality facilities and services and unique entertainment resources, Steigenberger Hotels & Resorts provides guests with a super high-end experience of high-quality conference services, high-quality leisure and quality meals to meet the diverse needs of guests’ various activities.
Jaz in the City
Jaz in the City is the company’s upscale lifestyle brand. Jaz in the City branded hotels reflect metropolitan lifestyle and draw upon the local music and cultural scene.
Grand Mercure Hotel
Grand Mercure Hotel offers guests an imaginative, discovery-filled hotel experience, a fresh and engaging stay that attracts visitors from around the world. Deeply rooted in its destinations, Grand Mercure Hotel offers an elegant and immersive cultural experience through warm, attentive staff who tell vivid stories and take guests on a journey through the traditions of fine dining and high-end hospitality.
Luxury Hotel Brand
Steigenberger Icons
Steigenberger Icons is the company’s first brand under luxury level, a prestigious level it granted only to the company’s most legendary Steigenberger hotels. It offers customers with legendary living experience through its provision of German-style butler services.
Song Hotels
Song Hotels is the company’s luxury hotel brand designed for high-end vacation experience. It creates luxurious and leisure stay experience for the guests through its portrait of contemporary Chinese lifestyle of pursuing perfection and its innovation of delicate aesthetics rooted in Song dynasty.
Hotel Network
The company operates hotels under lease and ownership, manachise and franchise models. Under the lease and ownership model, it directly operates hotels located primarily on leased properties, as well as on owned properties. Under the manachise model, the company manages manachised hotels through the on-site hotel managers it appoints and collects fees from franchisees. Under the franchise model, the company collects fees from franchisees but do not appoint on-site hotel managers.
Leased and Owned Hotels
The company is responsible for recruiting, training, and supervising the hotel managers and employees, paying for leases and costs associated with construction and renovation of these hotels, and purchasing all supplies and other required equipment.
The company’s leased hotels are located on leased properties. The terms of the company’s leases typically range from ten to 25 years. The company generally enjoys an initial two- to eight-month rent-free period. For certain of the company’s hotels (under Deutsche Hospitality), the landlords are responsible for renovating the hotels (other than soft furnishing) and it is not required to pay rent until this renovation is completed.
Manachised and Franchised Hotels
The company’s franchisees lease or own their hotel properties and are responsible for the costs of developing and operating the manachised or franchised hotels, including constructing and renovating the hotels according to its standards, and all the hotel operating expenses. The company imposes the same standards on all its manachised and franchised hotels to ensure product quality and consistency across the company’s hotel network. The company’s franchisees are not allowed to sub-franchise hotels under its brands to any third party. The company collects fees from the franchisees of its manachised and franchised hotels and do not bear loss incurred by the company’s franchisees.
Manachised Hotels
The company manages its manachised hotels and impose the same standards on all manachised hotels as the company’s other hotels to ensure product quality and consistency across its hotel network.
Franchised Hotels
The company applies the same standards to its franchised hotels as the company’s other hotels.
Privacy and Data Security
The company strictly complies with privacy and data security laws of the jurisdictions where it operates, including Cyber Security Law of the People’s Republic of China, the Data Security Law of the People’s Republic of China, the Personal Information Protection Law of the People’s Republic of China, and the General Data Protection Regulation (‘GDPR’) of the European Union. The company has in place extensive policies, processes, network architecture, and software to protect customer data. The company’s major systems, including those regarding property management, customer relationship management, as well as its website and mobile apps, has passed the Level III information security protection assessment conducted by the China National Accreditation Service for Conformity Assessment. The company has also obtained the ISO27001 information security management certification and the ISO27701 privacy information management certification. The company’s payment system has passed the payment card industry (‘PCI’) data security standard (‘DSS’) requirements and security assessment procedures assessment.
The company strictly complies with relevant laws and regulations, carry out compliance analyses on its internal App to ensure that the collection, use and processing of personal information are legal and compliant, and adopt the principle of minimum necessity to only collect customer information with the authorization and consent of customers. All personal information of guests is classified as the upmost confidential data in the company’s data security system.
The company has set up the H World Security Response Center, inviting external security experts to submit online reports outlining security vulnerabilities in its products and business to helps it discover and resolve security issues in a timely manner.
Sales and Marketing
The company’s marketing strategy is designed to enhance its brand recognition and customer loyalty. Building and differentiating the brand image of each of the company’s hotel products is critical to increasing its brand recognition. The company focuses on targeting the distinct guest segments that each of its hotel products serves and adopting effective marketing measures based on thorough analysis and application of data and analytics. In 2024, approximately 75% of the company’s room nights under legacy Huazhu were sold through its own sales channels and the remaining 25% of the company’s room nights were sold through intermediaries.
The company uses its RMS and Cloud-PMS systems to conduct pricing management for all its hotels except for the company’s franchised hotels. The company reviews its hotel pricing regularly and adjust room rates as needed based on local market conditions and the specific location of each hotel, focusing mainly on three factors: optimum occupancy rate of the hotel and the company’s other hotels nearby, seasonal demand for the hotel, and event-driven demand for the hotel.
A key component of the company’s marketing efforts is the H Rewards, its loyalty program, which covers all the company’s brands. the H Rewards loyalty program allows it to build customer loyalty and conduct lower-cost, targeted marketing campaigns.
Competition
The company primarily competes with other hotel chains as well as various independent hotels in each of the markets in which it operates, including Chinese hotel groups such as BTG Hotels, Jinjiang, and Atour, as well as international hotel groups, such as Marriot, Intercontinental, Accor, and Hilton. The company also faces competition from Airbnb and service apartments.
Intellectual Property
As of December 31, 2024, the company registered 1,751 trademarks and logos with the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA). As of December 31, 2024, the company filed 148 trademark applications pending for examination and review by the CNIPA. As of December 31, 2024, the company also registered 1,454 trademarks and filed 164 trademark applications outside China. As of December 31, 2024, the company received 32 patents; another 12 patents were applied and under review by relevant PRC authority. The company also received copyright registration certificates for 206 software programs developed by it as of December 31, 2024. In addition, the company registered 695 national and international top-level domain names, including www.hworld.com, as of December 31, 2024.
History
The company was founded in 2005. It was incorporated in the Cayman Islands under the laws of the Cayman Islands in 2007. The company was formerly known as Huazhu Group Limited and changed its name to H World Group Limited in June 2022.
