With 1,400 hotels in its possession but lacking a strong brand, is Lingnan Hotels forced to seek "external support"?
A state-owned local hotel management platform that already operates more than 1,400 hotels and ranks among the world's top 20 hotel groups, why would it still partner with a Thai hotel group? Recently, Lingnan Hotels reached a cooperation with Centara Hotels & Resorts, introducing Centara Life to the Chinese market, and plans to expand to key cities in the next 3 to 5 years. On the surface, this is a move of an international brand landing in China, but when placed in the growth trajectory of Lingnan Hotels, this "introduction of overseas resources" is even more thought-provoking. Its scale has grown significantly, but it still has shortcomings in brand building, national layout and profitability. For this long-established state-owned hotel group, what exactly can Centara bring to it?
Lingnan Hotels Partners With Thai Hotel Group Centara
Recently, Lingnan Hotels under Lingnan Group signed a letter of intent for hotel brand cooperation and operation with Thai hotel group Centara Hotels & Resorts in Bangkok. According to the agreement, the two parties will carry out cooperation in brand co-construction, mutual access to membership systems, two-way customer source diversion, sharing of service standards, cultural tourism product development and other fields. The core project of this cooperation is to introduce Centara Life, the mid-to-high-end lifestyle brand under Centara, to the Chinese market.
In accordance with the plan, the two parties will promote the localization of the brand for the Chinese market, jointly carry out brand incubation, project development and operation management, and plan to gradually expand to key cities across China in the next 3 to 5 years. In addition to the landing of hotel brands, the two sides will also open up their membership systems, and strengthen the customer source connection between China and tourist destinations in Thailand and the Asia-Pacific region with the help of two-way customer diversion. At the same time, the two parties will also explore the joint development of cultural tourism products to further connect hotels with scenarios such as tourism and consumption.
Judging from the currently released information, this is not a simple brand introduction. The cooperation covers multiple levels including brands, memberships, customer sources and cultural tourism products. However, to understand the significance of this cooperation, we must first take a look at the respective advantages held by the two parties.
Centara is a long-established Thai hotel group. Since the launch of its first Centara five-star hotel in 1983, the group has gradually expanded from a local Thai hotel enterprise to overseas markets. At present, Centara operates nearly 100 hotels in markets including Thailand, the Maldives, Vietnam, Laos, Japan and the Middle East. Its six brands cover different market segments, ranging from luxury resorts and high-end hotels to mid-to-high-end lifestyle hotels.
Centara Life, the brand entering the Chinese market this time, is exactly its mid-to-high-end lifestyle hotel brand. Compared with Centara's high-end resort-focused brands, Centara Life is positioned more for the mass market and is more suitable for large-scale expansion in urban markets. For Centara, this cooperation with Lingnan is also a step for it to further enter the Chinese market and find a localized landing path.
On the other hand, Lingnan Hotels is more localized by nature. Backed by Lingnan Group and listed company Lingnan Holdings, Lingnan Hotels has been deeply engaged in the hotel industry for many years, with well-known hotels such as Guangzhou Garden Hotel and China Hotel under its belt, and has formed a complete hotel brand and operation system. Lingnan has no shortage of hotel resources, let alone local cultural tourism resources, which is a background that cannot be ignored when understanding this cooperation.
The Lingnan side stated that Guangzhou is making every effort to build an international tourism hub and a world-class tourist destination, continuously expanding the inbound tourism market and promoting the internationalization of cultural tourism. This cooperation is a key move for Lingnan Hotels to advance its internationalization strategy targeting the ASEAN market. In the next stage, relying on the customer source and industrial foundation of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, it will further expand cooperation with Thailand and ASEAN markets. On the one hand, it will introduce more overseas cultural, commercial, tourism and hotel brands into China; on the other hand, it will promote ASEAN customers including those from Thailand to enter Guangdong and Guangzhou, and at the same time push Lingnan's local hotel brands, Cantonese catering brands, Lingnan food brands and other brands to go global.
As a local group that has been in the hotel business for many years, why does it still need to leverage a Thai hotel group to find new growth points?
The Rapid Scale Expansion of a Long-established State-owned Enterprise
To understand today's Lingnan Hotels, we must first understand Lingnan Holdings. In 1993, Guangzhou Oriental Hotel Co., Ltd. was established and listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange in the same year. At that time, the core business of Lingnan Hotels was just the Oriental Hotel.
In 2009, Lingnan Group took over the Oriental Hotel. In 2014, Lingnan Holdings acquired 100% equity of Lingnan Hotels. In 2015, Oriental Hotel was renamed Lingnan Holdings. In 2017, Lingnan Holdings included assets such as Guangzhou Travel, Garden Hotel and China Hotel into the listed company through major asset restructuring.
After these steps, Oriental Hotel evolved from a single hotel to the starting point of Lingnan Holdings, a comprehensive listed tourism company, while Lingnan Hotels gradually became a professional platform under Lingnan Holdings responsible for hotel operation management and brand output. Therefore, Lingnan Hotels has a distinct particularity: it is not a hotel management company that grew up purely through market-based franchise expansion, but a professional hotel management platform within the system of a state-owned cultural tourism group.
Backed by Lingnan Group and Lingnan Holdings, Lingnan Hotels had high-quality hotel resources such as Garden Hotel, China Hotel and Oriental Hotel from the very beginning. For Lingnan Holdings, hotels have always been one of its core businesses. In the 2025 annual report of Lingnan Holdings, the hotel business is still clearly placed at the core of the accommodation sector.
However, having good hotels does not naturally make a strong hotel management group. Lingnan Hotels officially began its transformation into a hotel management platform around 2014. Since then, Lingnan Hotels has continuously enriched its brand portfolio, covering high-end hotels, urban business hotels, resorts, apartments and non-standard accommodation with brands ranging from Lingnan No.5, Lingnan Oriental to Lingju, Lingnan Starlight Camp and others.
At the same time, Lingnan also began to expand its business from "operating its own hotels" to "managing more hotels". This path has not been traveled very fast, but the direction has become increasingly clear. On the one hand, Lingnan continues to promote the external output of mature brands such as Garden Hotel and Lingnan Oriental. In recent years, the Garden Hotel brand has begun to shift from self-owned properties to outputting management for external projects, and the Lingnan Oriental brand has also landed in multiple cities in the Greater Bay Area.
On the other hand, Lingnan is also expanding its management scale through mergers and acquisitions. At the end of 2023, Lingnan Group acquired Urban Hotel Group, and the related business was subsequently operated by Lingnan Hotels under Lingnan Holdings. Urban Hotel Group mainly focuses on the economy and mid-range market, and has a solid foundation in the northern market, which further extends Lingnan Hotels' business territory that was previously mainly concentrated in South China to the whole country.
As a result, Lingnan Hotels has formed its current basic business layout. It not only has long-established hotels such as Garden Hotel and China Hotel, but also self-owned brands such as Lingnan Oriental, Lingnan No.5 and Lingju, as well as a large number of mid-range and economy hotels brought by Urban Hotel Group.
In 2025, Lingnan Hotels operated more than 1,400 hotels across China, with nearly 110,000 managed rooms, and was listed in the 2025 annual global hotel group ranking by HOTELS. It ranked 19th in the world by number of hotels, 25th by number of rooms, and 14th among the top 60 Chinese hotel groups. Lingnan Hotels is no longer just a "Guangzhou-based hotel company", but is gradually becoming a truly national platform for Lingnan Holdings' hotel business. This also means that Lingnan Hotels is now facing a completely new set of operating rules.
What Is the Missing Card for Lingnan Hotels After Operating 1,400 Hotels?
Up to now, Lingnan Hotels has no shortage of scale, but "being large" does not equal "being strong". An in-depth look at Lingnan Hotels reveals that it currently faces three major dilemmas:
The first is that its brands are "numerous" but "not strong". Lingnan Hotels currently has 28 brands covering multiple fields including platinum five-star, boutique cultural tourism, leisure resort, urban business, chain accommodation, apartments and non-standard accommodation. The brand portfolio looks rich enough, but a careful inventory shows that there are not many brands that truly have market recognition and brand appeal.
Most of the truly influential brands come from its "historical heritage". Guangzhou Garden Hotel is the only local brand among the first batch of platinum five-star hotels in China, and both China Hotel and Guangzhou Oriental Hotel are among the first batch of five-star hotels in China. The industry status and historical accumulation of these three hotels are undeniable, but most of these brand auras were accumulated in the 1980s and 1990s, not the product of modern brand operation capabilities.
Looking at its self-owned brands, Lingnan Oriental Hotel is the high-end brand under key development, but its market recognition outside Guangdong still needs to be improved. Lingnan No.5 Hotel is positioned as a boutique cultural tourism brand, Lingju Creative Apartment and Lingshe Creative Apartment focus on long-term rental apartments, and Lingnan Starlight Camp targets non-standard accommodation. These brands have their own characteristics, but none of them are leading players in their respective tracks, and there is still a gap compared with national brands such as Hanting, All Seasons, Home Inn and Vienna that can be replicated on a large scale and independently recognized by consumers.
After acquiring Urban Hotel Group, Lingnan Hotels' brand territory was further expanded, adding brands including She Hotel, She·Simple, Eve·Misu, She·Misu Hotel, Urban Garden Hotel, Urban Hotel, Monochrome Chain Hotel, My Zone Theme Hotel, My Zone E-sports Hotel and others. These brands mainly focus on the economy and mid-range market, and have a certain foundation in northern China, but they are not completely aligned with Lingnan's original high-end brand system.
In the final analysis, the true value of hotel brands does not lie in the quantity, but in the scale, recognition and premium capability of each individual brand. Lingnan Hotels has also realized this point. The Centara Life brand introduced through cooperation with Centara mentioned earlier has accumulated certain advantages in Thailand and the Asia-Pacific market, and its positioning exactly fills the gap of Lingnan in the mid-to-high-end lifestyle segment. Instead of incubating a new brand from scratch, leveraging an international brand with a mature existing model to fill the gap may be the most pragmatic path choice at present.
The second dilemma is that it still lacks sufficient momentum to achieve full national coverage outside its traditional regional market. Lingnan Hotels has been deeply engaged in South China for decades, with its business highly tied to Guangdong and the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. It did not take the key step towards national expansion until it acquired 70% equity of Urban Hotel Group at the end of 2023. The logic of the acquisition is very clear: Lingnan lacks the northern market and chain franchise capabilities, which Urban Hotel Group just has.
In the past two years, Lingnan Hotels has been strengthening its north-south dual development pattern, accelerating its entry into markets such as Beijing, Hubei, Hunan and Guizhou, and establishing the Northern Headquarters of Lingnan Hotels and the Southern Headquarters of Urban Hotel Group. However, a closer look at the 2025 expansion data shows that the hotel management business expanded about 150 projects with a full brand matrix of "luxury + mid-range + economy", but the expansion locations are concentrated in Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Shaoguan, Shantou, Chaozhou, Jieyang, Maoming and other places. The vast majority of the 150 projects are still located within Guangdong Province. The so-called "going out of the region" is more of an extension of management radius, rather than a substantial penetration of brand influence.
In addition, although the north-south dual headquarters structure of Lingnan Hotels contributes to scale expansion, it is still a huge question mark whether Urban Hotel Group's deep cultivation in the northern market can be truly transformed into the landing capability of Lingnan's self-owned brands in the northern market.
The third dilemma is the profitability challenge. After expanding its scale, Lingnan Hotels also needs to answer a more realistic question: whether the scale can be converted into profits. In 2025, Lingnan Hotels achieved an operating revenue of 284 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 9.42%, but its net profit was only 5 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 61.30%. With an operating revenue of 284 million yuan and a net profit of 5 million yuan, the profit margin is less than 2%. The company explained that this is mainly due to the successive operation of new directly-operated projects, which led to an increase in upfront investment and operating costs. Large upfront investment and long return cycle for directly-operated projects are normal in the hotel industry, but the obvious profit pressure while the scale continues to expand also indicates that Lingnan Hotels' asset-light output model is still in the climbing stage.
What is more noteworthy is that the gross profit margin of the hotel management business has also continued to decline. It was 27.29% in 2024, down 8.21 percentage points year on year, and further dropped to 22.99% in 2025. While the management scale is expanding, the profitability has not improved synchronously. Lingnan Hotels still has a long way to go from "becoming large" to "becoming strong".
It can be said that what Lingnan Hotels is lacking now is not just scale, but how to further convert the scale into brand influence, achieve "nationalization", "globalization" and better operating returns.
Four Unresolved Issues Facing State-owned Hotels
The dilemma of Lingnan Hotels is not an isolated case. From a broader perspective, local state-owned hotel groups in China are experiencing a collective identity anxiety. From Zhejiang Radisson to Sichuan Ease, from Chongqing Liangjiang Holiday to Nanjing Lvjia Hotel Management, to China Tourism Group's strategic investment in Acor and Hubei Cultural Tourism's acquisition of Junting before exiting midway, local state-owned hotels have taken very frequent actions. But there is an awkward reality: state-owned hotels hold a large number of high-quality assets, but have not yet developed matching brand capabilities and operation capabilities.
So how to move forward? Looking at the broader state-owned hotel market, there are at least several directions worth considering in the future.
The first is to accelerate the separation of light and heavy assets. The experience of leading hotel groups shows that the separation of light and heavy assets is the only way for hotel groups to achieve large-scale, specialized and high-quality development. Especially with the gradual relaxation of domestic REITs policies for hotel assets, as well as the advancement of state-owned enterprise reform and professional integration, many state-owned platform companies have accumulated certain hotel development and management experience, gradually transforming from property owners to operators, while focusing on polishing hotel product models and building brands, establishing hotel management companies and consciously promoting the asset-light development of brands.
However, the effect of "separation of light and heavy assets" of many state-owned hotels is still in the cultivation stage. For example, as mentioned earlier, Lingnan Hotels still has a relatively high proportion of directly-operated hotels in its asset structure, and the revenue from hotel operation business is more than three times that of the management business. It should be noted that the separation of light and heavy assets cannot be rushed, and brand incubation is a long-term process. At this stage, instead of blindly pursuing scale, it is better to polish products, operations and service standards first. Use standardized management and efficiency improvement to empower heavy assets, then continuously accumulate products and capabilities, gradually cultivate truly competitive brands, and wait for the right time for expansion.
The second is to cooperate with partners that can truly make up for shortcomings. In recent years, many state-owned hotels have been expanding their "circle of friends", hoping to make up for their shortcomings with the help of mature professional partners. However, if the cooperation only stays at the level of brand co-branding and mutual membership access, the help to project operation and asset value is actually limited. Therefore, when looking for cooperation partners, state-owned hotels should not only look at brand reputation, but also check whether the capabilities of the two sides are complementary, whether resources can truly flow, and whether the cooperation can finally deliver good project operation results.
China Tourism Group's choice to cooperate with Acor may be a case worth observing. China Tourism Group has cultural tourism resources, assets and channels, while Acor has relatively mature hotel brands, asset-light management and operation systems. The value of the cooperation between the two sides is not just adding a few more brands, but trying to combine their respective resources into a new set of operating capabilities. The cooperation between Lingnan and Centara has just started, and it still needs time to verify whether it can reach this stage.
The third is to truly link the cultural tourism resources held by state-owned enterprises. This is an important advantage that distinguishes state-owned hotels from ordinary private hotel management companies. Many local state-owned groups hold resources such as scenic spots, travel agencies, duty-free, catering, commerce and transportation, but in the past they often operated independently: hotels still sold accommodation, scenic spots still sold tickets, and travel agencies still sold travel routes.
Under the trend of integrated development of culture, tourism and sports, the value of such resource synergy is being amplified. Hotels can become the accommodation entry point for tourists to enter the destination, travel