The leading ultra-luxury flagship hotel in Beijing is still looking for a new owner to this day.

The Waldorf Astoria Beijing, which was rumored to be put up for sale at a price of 2 billion yuan in early last year, still remains unsold after a full year has passed.

Recently, according to China Fortune Network, COFCO BVI 97 Co., Ltd., a subsidiary under COFCO Group, plans to transfer 100% equity of the Waldorf Astoria Beijing.

This is not the first time the Waldorf Astoria Beijing has been rumored to be seeking a transfer. The project has previously released sale listings, but the expected buyer from the market has never shown up, leaving the transaction pending for a long time.

As the first settled project of Waldorf Astoria in northern Chinese cities, the Waldorf Astoria Beijing is located in the prime location of Jinbao Street, Wangfujing, and holds the scarce commercial-use siheyuan property in Beijing, with top-tier hardware, location and brand resources.

In terms of location, there are only a handful of hotels across the country that can outperform it. The location is sufficiently scarce and the product has strong recognizability, but why is it so hard to find a suitable buyer?

Looking at the entire domestic bulk high-star hotel market, similar stories are constantly unfolding. A large number of high-star hotels that once represented the city's facade are in good operating condition, but trapped in the cycle of transfer, auction and failed auction.

01 Who will take over the Waldorf Astoria Beijing?

In early last year, according to the disclosure of the Beijing Property Exchange, COFCO, a subsidiary of COFCO Joy City, listed and transferred 100% equity of Taiwan Hotel Co., Ltd. — which is exactly the owner entity of the Waldorf Astoria Beijing, with the market rumored price as high as 2 billion RMB.

For a moment, this news caused quite a stir in the hotel industry.

However, more than a year has passed, and there has been no follow-up to this transaction. No "deal closed" information has been found on either the official public announcement platform or market updates. The pre-disclosure announcement of the transfer released on the Beijing Property Exchange at that time has long expired and been removed.

Judging only from the conditions on paper, the Waldorf Astoria Beijing has a solid foundation. It is located in the core area of central Beijing, adjacent to the bustling Wangfujing Commercial Street, with the magnificent Forbidden City only two blocks away, and has almost no substitutes in the market.

Yet such an asset that seems nearly perfect has been rumored to be listed for sale many times, but the transaction has never moved forward. Public information shows that the Waldorf Astoria Beijing recorded an operating income of about 160 million yuan in 2024, with a net profit of only 3.9196 million yuan. Although net profit cannot be directly equated with the hotel's cash flow, such operating performance seems difficult to support the price expected by buyers.

In addition, the market mentality has also changed. In the early years, real estate developers and capital were willing to pay for the "landmark aura" of luxury hotels in core urban areas, valuing the book valuation of assets and the business card effect.

Nowadays, people no longer blindly believe in the aura of prime locations. They first calculate cash flow, payback period, and the annual continuous maintenance cost. Even the scarce property inside the Second Ring Road of Beijing cannot skip the assessment of real operating performance.

This has created an awkward situation. The seller is aware of the historical value of the asset and is unwilling to sell it at an excessive discount; the buyer, standing in the current industry cycle, sees the continuous operational pressure and is unwilling to pay an excessive premium.

It is difficult for the two sides to align their expectations, which leads to the situation that no deal has been closed after more than a year of listing.

The dilemma of the Waldorf Astoria Beijing actually reflects the common pain points of a large number of high-star hotels. No matter how good a city landmark is, it will eventually return to the essence of operation when entering the asset transaction market.

02 More and more high-star hotels are hard to sell

Expanding the vision from Beijing to the whole country, you will find there are countless high-star hotels in a similar situation to the Waldorf Astoria Beijing.

R&F, which was once known as the world's largest owner of luxury hotels, held 93 hotel assets at its peak. After several years of continuous disposal, its scale has shrunk significantly, but there are still many high-star hotels waiting to be disposed of on the market.

Some projects successfully found buyers after auction, while a large number of targets received no bids after being listed, the price was cut after the auction failed, then they were listed again, going round and round in cycles.

The Wanda Vista Taiyuan has failed in auctions for many times, the Wanda Realm Nanning has been put up for judicial auction, and many other Wanda Vista and Wanda Realm hotels located in second- and third-tier cities have stagnant disposal progress.

It is not that no buyers come to inspect, but there are too few people who are willing to match the price and take over all the debts.

The Ritz-Carlton hotel property planned and constructed in the Wuhan Greenland Center, known as the tallest building in Central China, failed in its first auction. Recently, the JD Asset Trading Platform has released the second auction announcement, with the starting price reduced to 869.94 million yuan, about 100 million yuan lower than the first auction, a decrease of about 10%, equivalent to 81% of the assessed price. The Sheraton Jinzhou Hotel has an assessed value of more than 500 million yuan, but no entity participated in the bidding during the whole auction process; the Crowne Plaza Taizhou failed in the auction after being listed for sale;

Many other old landmark hotels in cities across the country keep lowering their starting prices, but it is still difficult to find suitable acquirers.

Some hotel assets have even experienced more than 20 rounds of price reductions, with the target price gradually dropping from over 400 million yuan to more than 100 million yuan, but there are still no bidders participating.

The market is not short of available funds. According to data sorted out by JLL, the total transaction value of domestic hotel investment in the first half of 2026 exceeded 9.9 billion yuan, with the transaction scale rising 155.4% year on year.

During the same six-month period, 441 hotel assets worth tens of millions of yuan were listed on the judicial auction platform across the country, but only 20 transactions were finally completed, with an overall transaction rate of only 4.5%.

There is still sufficient capital in the market, but the direction of investors' choices has changed. The buyers who are currently willing to acquire high-end hotel assets can be divided into several categories.

The first category is insurance funds and various institutional funds. Such entities only select assets in core locations of first-tier cities with stable cash income and simple debt relations, and acquire the assets to collect rental income in the long term.

The second category is local state-owned capital. Such entities mostly participate in acquisitions in judicial auction scenarios, take over local landmark hotel projects, maintain urban supporting functions, and avoid project suspension.

The remaining small part is private capital, which specifically looks for targets with large discounts. After the acquisition, they renovate the hotel, replace the operating brand, and obtain the income difference through asset value recovery.

However, such buyers set very strict screening conditions.

The target needs to be located in the core area of a first-tier city, with clear debt status, stable brand operation agreement, good daily operating cash income, and no large pending renovation expenses.

As long as one of the conditions cannot be met, even if the hotel has high popularity, it will be directly excluded by the buyer.

The 4.5% transaction rate of judicial auctions can directly reflect the current market situation: most hotel assets entering the auction process cannot meet the acquisition requirements of capital parties.

Many hotel assets are still unable to find acquirers even after their prices are cut by more than half.

This illustrates a fact: It is not that no one wants high-star hotel assets, but the price has not fallen to a level where buyers are willing to take long-term operational risks.

03 High-star hotels are sold at a discount

Even with prime locations and the aura of foreign brands, it has become normal for high-star hotels to be sold at a discount in the auction market.

This nationwide wave of high-star hotel auctions is essentially the end of the "golden age" of China's high-star hotels, and the industry is undergoing in-depth adjustment and reshuffling.

High-star hotels that developed relying on the logic of real estate expansion in the past are now restricted by multiple factors including oversupply in the market, high labor and operating costs, changing customer groups, Generation Z's preference for personalized hotels, and the loss of traditional high-star customers, and are gradually being reduced from once scarce assets to "hot potatoes" in the hands of traditional owners.

This round of high-star hotel sell-off will not end soon. In the next few years, a large number of domestic high-star hotels will reach a crossroads of fate.

Some high-quality core properties will complete the transfer. Capital will continue to screen, and hotels in core locations of first-tier cities with clear property rights and stable cash flow will still be acquired by insurance capital, industrial capital and high-net-worth buyers. However, more high-star hotels are likely to fall into a long listing cycle.

The hotel industry never lacks incoming capital, but the real difficulty lies in how investors can withdraw the funds settled in the property after the hotel is built and operated for many years.

Traditionally, there are only several exit methods for hotel assets: selling the property, transferring the equity of the project company, applying for mortgage loans, or continuing operations to wait for cash flow recovery.

The market no longer unconditionally recognizes the premium brought by brands. The brand is only the outer shell of hotel operation, and the fundamental value of the asset itself still depends on hard indicators such as cash flow, property right ownership, geographical location, and renovation cost.

Hotels with long-term losses, relying on short-term subsidies, flawed property rights, or facing large-scale renovation investment are very likely to be difficult to find buyers.

Statistics from Hotel Guide Network show that the number of listed hotel transfers in the first half of 2026 increased by 223% compared with the same period of the previous year, with more than 230 hotels listed for transfer on average every day, which is equivalent to one hotel looking for a buyer every 6 minutes.

However, the number of views that a single transfer information can receive has dropped from about 1000 times in 2023 to about 400 times this year.

There are a large number of hotels listed for transfer, but very few people are willing to take over, which is basically the most real market situation at present. Whether people admit it or not, high-star hotels have already stood at a crossroads of fate.