He has been selling a hotel for ten years.

With a total consideration of 2.777 billion yuan and a span of ten years, Huang Deman has fully sold Vienna Hotels to Jin Jiang. Why did he choose to liquidate the brand that he had held for 30 years? What is Jin Jiang's intention to take over the business at this moment? As the industry raised widespread doubts, everything traces back to the story starting from "opening a hotel with a Western name with only 3000 yuan" to "the curtain call of a representative figure in the general mid-range hotel sector"...

Full Liquidation at 2.777 Billion Yuan: Huang Deman Bids Farewell to "Vienna"

In October 2026, 65-year-old Huang Deman signed the equity transfer agreement, selling the last 10% stake of Vienna Hotels in his hand to Jin Jiang at a price of 810 million yuan. After the transfer of the equity, he will completely say goodbye to the series of brands he founded 32 years ago.

According to the announcement issued by Jin Jiang Hotels, this transaction involves a 10% equity stake in Vienna Hotels and a 10% equity stake in Shenzhen Baisuicun Catering Chain Co., Ltd., with a total transaction price of about 811 million yuan. After the transaction is completed, Jin Jiang Hotels will hold 100% equity of the two companies respectively.

At this point, this nearly ten-year exit has officially come to an end.

Looking back at April 2016, Huang Deman sold 80% of the equity of Vienna Hotels for 1.7488 billion yuan, and sold 80% of the equity of Baisuicun Catering for 800,000 yuan at the same time; six years later, Jin Jiang acquired another 10% of the equity of Vienna Hotels for 218.6 million yuan, and acquired 10% of the equity of Baisuicun Catering for 100,000 yuan.

Until this transaction in October 2026, all the chips in Huang Deman's hands were fully liquidated, and Jin Jiang Hotels paid a total of 2.777 billion yuan over ten years.

In the same announcement, several sets of figures also attracted attention.

As of June 30, 2026, Vienna Hotels had total assets of 3.844 billion yuan, total liabilities of 3.366 billion yuan, and net assets of only 478 million yuan.

Net profit is also under pressure. In 2025, Vienna Hotels achieved operating revenue of 3.485 billion yuan and net profit of 545 million yuan; in the first half of 2026, operating revenue reached 1.687 billion yuan and net profit was 230 million yuan.

This means that a company managing more than 3,800 stores with an annual net profit of more than 500 million yuan has less than 500 million yuan in net assets on its books, while the asset-liability ratio is about 87.6%.

There is no doubt that Jin Jiang Hotels bought the last 10% stake at an implied valuation of 8.1 billion yuan, and also took over this financial structure at the same time.

Then where did the revenue go? Why does a hotel management company that does not own properties carry 3.3 billion yuan in liabilities? Why did Jin Jiang spend 810 million yuan to take over the last 10% at this time? This 2.777 billion yuan transaction around Vienna may be worth sorting out from the beginning.

From 10 Million Yuan to Nearly 400 Million Yuan: "Raising Funds from Suppliers"

One person's exit and a company's financial structure are essentially the same story. To understand it, we have to start from the young man who could not borrow 50 yuan 40 years ago.

Huang Deman was born in Yangjiang, Guangdong in 1961, and his family was poor when he was young. The first major setback in his life happened in 1977, the first year after the college entrance examination was resumed. He was admitted to a junior college, but he finally gave up enrollment because he could not borrow 50 yuan for the physical examination fee.

This sum of money that he failed to borrow became a story he told repeatedly for decades afterwards, and almost indirectly shaped his original obsession with capital. Later, he publicly said many times that Vienna Hotels was "built with other people's money".

This sentence later became a business philosophy, and then became a footnote in the annual financial reports over the years.

In the late 1980s, the construction of Shenzhen Special Economic Zone was in the ascendant. Huang Deman came to Shenzhen with 5,000 yuan saved from selling bamboo and weaving bamboo products. He first engaged in earthwork and land reclamation projects, leading the construction team from his hometown to carry out land reclamation and soil transportation, completing the primitive accumulation of capital.

In the early 1990s, he quickly noticed the ceiling of the engineering industry, and turned to a business with more sustainable profitability. In 1993, he spent 3,000 yuan to contract a small hotel, renamed it "Vienna", and officially entered the hotel industry.

Huang Deman explained the origin of this name more than once - he is a classical music enthusiast, "Vienna is the capital of music, and I hope this name is a beautiful symbol".

This name, which seemed somewhat "Western-style" in the society at that time, later became a unique brand asset. Even today, some consumers still think Vienna is a foreign brand; a name given to a hotel by a young man from Guangdong accidentally hit the subconscious of China's general mid-range hotel consumption upgrading in the following decades.

The naming was bold, but the early expansion of Vienna was actually a textbook-level careful calculation.

In 1993, the first Vienna Hotel (Vienna 3 Good Hotel Shenzhen Huasha Branch) officially opened in Shenzhen, with 229 rooms, a scale comparable to medium and large hotels.

At that time, the construction cost per room of hotels of the same specification in the industry was generally about 70,000 yuan per room. He set up his own construction team and purchased in building materials markets, pressing the investment per room to 40,000 yuan; the 30,000 yuan saved in each room became the earliest foundation for this business to operate smoothly for decades.

At that time, banks were unwilling to lend to small private hotels, so Huang Deman relied on supplier credit for rolling development, that is, he owed the decoration fees first, and paid them back slowly with the operating cash flow after opening. He later did not shy away from saying, "If we have to talk about financing, we are financing from suppliers."

He also made breakthroughs in products, taking the lead in putting forward the positioning of "five-star experience, two-star consumption", setting the room price at 200-300 yuan, but adding coffee, buffet, conference and banquet hall and other categories compared with economy hotels. The addition of these categories made the profit per room about 70 yuan higher, earning money that economy hotels could not earn.

In terms of marketing, he hardly did any advertising, and accumulated customers by word of mouth and members, "members follow the stores". These members continued to accumulate in the following ten years, becoming the most valuable asset for the subsequent franchise expansion.

Vienna Hotels under Huang Deman's management relied on this methodology to open 16 stores at a rate of about two per year from 1999 to 2006, with revenue growing from 10 million yuan to nearly 400 million yuan.

From the current perspective of large-scale development and supply chain dominance, this expansion speed is undoubtedly very slow, but every step is based on cash flow, except that a considerable proportion of this cash flow belongs to other people.

Vienna Hotels with "Slow Exit" Achieves Large-scale Development Under Jin Jiang

In the middle stage, the real stimulus came from capital.

In October 2006, Home Inn, which was founded three years later than Huang Deman's business, was listed on NASDAQ, raising more than 200 million US dollars, and the number of stores was four times that of Vienna Hotels.

According to reports at that time, Huang Deman was "very stimulated". Both were operating chain hotels, but the capital market seemed to give a much higher valuation to others than to Vienna.

In 2007, he introduced 115 million yuan (15 million US dollars) from SoftBank SAIF, transferring 23% of the shares.

As a condition of exchange, he set two bottom lines for himself: refusing performance gambling agreements, and stipulating that the upper limit of equity dilution would not exceed 26%. This was his first move to seek capital from institutional investors; until 2010, Key Capital participated in the Series B round with 20 million US dollars.

In that era when performance gambling agreements were prevalent, these two bottom lines protected his control and also his retreat. Huang Deman once said bluntly, "I won't be as stupid as other bosses", and he later added, "We are not playing capital games here."

In 2008 when he got the funds, the brands under Vienna Hotels opened 18 stores within one year, which was a sudden acceleration compared with the past, and planned to hit the A-share market. His plan was to get listed around 2011.

However, in the following years, the A-share listing window closed repeatedly, and there was no way to get listed.

Finally, in April 2016, Jin Jiang Hotels acquired 80% of the equity of Vienna Hotels for 1.7488 billion yuan, and acquired 80% of the equity of the related Baisuicun Catering for 800,000 yuan at the same time.

In the same period, the industry integration trend rose. Jin Jiang successively acquired Louvre Hotels Group and Plateno Groups, Huazhu acquired Orange Hotel, Home Inn was privatized by BTG Hotels for more than 10 billion yuan, and 7 Days Inn was delisted for restructuring. The independent listing windows for mid-range hotel brands were closed one after another.

A group of people who "did not want to play capital games" were successively merged into the financial statements by capital.

Yicai Daily used a meaningful title in its report at that time — "How Can a Hotel Owner Who Earned 2 Billion Yuan Bring Up 100 Billionaires". Perhaps that was the highlight moment for Huang Deman. He claimed that he would "create 100 billionaires through the franchise system", full of confidence in his own model.

However, the details are worth pondering. He did not sell all the equity of Vienna Hotels in his hand, leaving 20%. Some people said that this 20% was unwillingness, observation, and transition. If Jin Jiang's integration was not good, he still had chips in his hand; if the integration went well, this 20% would be the option reserved for the future.

After that, he continued to serve as the CEO of Vienna Hotels, retained the title of "Founder of Vienna Hotels" on his business card, and was also employed as a visiting professor at the University of Vienna; he always played a pivotal role in the system of Vienna Hotels.

In 2017, Huang Deman launched the "1+N" equity incentive plan, distributing 35% of the 218 million yuan equity to 122 employees under him. The large company arranged the founder properly, and he was happy to continue standing in the front stage as the founder, watching Vienna continue to grow under the Jin Jiang system.

The next ten years was a thought-provoking pricing curve.

In June 2022, Jin Jiang acquired the 10% equity held by Huang Deman for 218.6 million yuan, converting the overall valuation to 2.186 billion yuan, which was exactly the same as that in 2016. After six years, the equity was almost placed in Jin Jiang's hands at the original price.

In October 2026, the last 10% stake was priced at 810 million yuan, with an implied valuation of 8.1 billion yuan. It increased by 3.7 times within four years.

Vienna Hotels, which was incorporated by Jin Jiang, has indeed achieved scale growth. At the time of acquisition in 2016, Vienna had 303 opened hotels in more than 70 large and medium-sized cities across the country.

By the first half of 2026, Vienna International Hotels reached 1353 units, Vienna Hotels 1774 units, Vienna Zhihao Hotels 242 units, and Vienna 3 Good Hotels 443 units, totaling more than 3800 units.

In terms of revenue, Vienna Hotels achieved revenue of 3.485 billion yuan and net profit of 545 million yuan in 2025, almost becoming one of the most profitable assets in China's general mid-range hotel market. After the performance was realized, the last chip naturally rose in value.

For nearly 20 years, Huang Deman has turned the exit itself into a profitable business.

Spending 810 Million Yuan to Buy "10%"? What Jin Jiang Buys is Franchise Revenue

But if you only see up to this point, the story seems too perfect.

Go back to the figures at the beginning: net assets of 478 million yuan, liabilities of 3.366 billion yuan, and an asset-liability ratio of about 87.6%.

Why does a hotel management company that does not own properties and carry mortgage loans have 3.3 billion yuan in liabilities? The overall asset-liability ratio of Jin Jiang Hotels is about 63%, and that of Huazhu is about 85%. The data of Vienna Hotels is more extreme than the two.

The clues to the answer were buried in Huang Deman's entrepreneurial origin 30 years ago. The practice of defaulting on payments to suppliers later evolved into occupying funds of the entire franchise chain; the deposits collected from franchisees, the franchise fees and management fees collected in advance, the pending decoration and material payments on the supply chain, and the capital transactions between companies within the system. Most of these liabilities are not bank loans, but "other people's money".

In fact, this structure is not uncommon in the hotel franchise industry. The brand side uses the deposited funds for expansion. The larger the scale, the deeper the capital pool. As long as the stores are still growing steadily and franchise fees keep coming in continuously, it is a good business.

However, the real "touchstone" of this model is the store closure wave.

Industry data shows that in the first half of 2026, about 30,000 market entities in the national accommodation sector were deregistered (an average of more than 160 stores closed every day, one store closed every 9 minutes on average); store closures are mainly concentrated in economy and mid-range hotels, as well as inefficient, old, unbranded and unfeatured independent hotels.

When the tide of the industry starts to change direction, what to do with the money of others in the capital pool is worthy of continuous attention.

Look at another account. From 2016 to now, the accumulated net profit of Vienna Hotels is estimated to be in the range of 3 billion to 4 billion yuan, but the net assets are 478 million yuan, which means that most of the profits have been distributed. So who are these profits distributed to?

Huang Deman cashed out 2.777 billion yuan in ten years, which is a prominent part; the 218 million yuan employee stock ownership plan in 2017 is a warm part; the annual dividends taken away by major shareholders are a silent part.

An annual net profit of 545 million yuan corresponds to a net asset of 478 million yuan, and the return on net assets exceeds 100%. Another interpretation of this seemingly amazing figure is that the company's own equity base has been compressed to the thinnest level. Vienna Hotels is a high-speed operating cash machine, and in the withdrawal order, shareholders are placed before the company.

Then the question arises: Why is Jin Jiang willing to spend 810 million yuan to buy the remaining "10%" of such a company?

This account can only be calculated clearly from Jin Jiang's way of thinking. Wholly-owned holding can eliminate the cost of minority shareholder game.

Jin Jiang stated in the announcement that full ownership can enhance the control over subsidiaries, improve decision-making efficiency, integrate company resources, reduce management costs, maximize overall value, which is conducive to clarifying the organizational structure and business division, and helping the implementation of future strategic development plans.

Looking back at Jin Jiang's financial report, in the first half of 2026, the operating revenue was 6.801 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 4.21%, and the attributable net profit was 545 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 47.05%; revenue increased slightly while profit surged, and recovering minority shareholders' profits may be a key part of this growth