Is Zhejiang Tourism Investment going to readily take over the scenic area and hotel assets of Sunriver Culture & Tourism?

Recently, Zhejiang Tourism Investment Group (hereinafter referred to as "Zhejiang Tourism Investment") acquired shares in Sunriver Culture & Tourism (600576.SH) through judicial auction, with its shareholding ratio reaching 14.78%, making it the second largest shareholder. Going back, starting from April this year, Zhejiang Tourism Investment has been purchasing shares of Sunriver Culture & Tourism on the secondary market one after another, until it increased its shareholding to 14.78% in October. A provincial state-owned tourism platform has acquired 10% of the shares of another listed private tourism enterprise. Why did it choose to enter the market at this point in time? What did Zhejiang Tourism Investment take a fancy to?

Zhejiang Tourism Investment Acquires 10% Stake in Sunriver Culture & Tourism

This share acquisition is not a mutually willing cooperation, but a takeover of a judicial auction.

The situation on the Sunriver Culture & Tourism side is: at the end of November 2025, problems occurred in the redemption of wealth management products, with about 20 billion yuan to be redeemed, involving nearly 10,000 investors; on December 7, the actual controller Yu Faxiang was subjected to criminal compulsory measures.

One day after the judicial auction transfer was completed, the actual controller Yu Faxiang was filed for investigation by the China Securities Regulatory Commission on suspicion of illegal information disclosure. The total shareholding of the Sunriver system dropped from 58.08% to 48.07%. Although the control right is still in hand, one-tenth of the shares have been sold by the court.

On the side of Zhejiang Tourism Investment, as a provincial state-owned platform, what is it aiming for by taking shares in Sunriver Culture & Tourism?

In fact, Zhejiang Tourism Investment has a five-year assignment to complete, but one of the questions has been stuck for a long time.

In August 2020, Zhejiang gathered the tourism assets of the whole province, merged the original Zhejiang Tourism Group and Zhejiang Zheqin Group, and integrated the tourism-related assets of provincial enterprises and provincial government institutions.

After the establishment, Zhejiang Tourism Investment has a total asset of 11 billion yuan, with its core sector being the Radisson Hotel Group, which operates more than 200 hotels across the country with a total of more than 20,000 rooms, as well as time-honored cultural tourism assets including Zhejiang Hotel, Wanghu Hotel, Qiandao Lake Resort Hotel and so on.

In the same year, the 14th Five-Year Plan set the target of having 500 hotels and more than 50,000 rooms, and clearly took the listing of the hotel management sector as a development goal.

Six years have passed in a blink of an eye. How many hotels does Radisson Hotel Group have today? According to the official promotion in 2025, there are more than 260 signed and opened hotels across the country; third-party industry data shows that the number of domestic hotels that have signed formal management contracts and opened is 385.

No matter which data is used, by the end of the 14th Five-Year Plan period, Radisson Hotel Group still has a gap to reach the scale of 500 hotels.

At this critical juncture, Sunriver Culture & Tourism owns thousands of hotel rooms, almost all of which are located in scenic spots. The 2026 semi-annual report shows that its largest hotel room stock is at the Qiyun Mountain Resort Hotel, which has more than 400 rooms; on July 17 this year, 158 new rooms added in Phase II of Yuehua Hotel also started trial operation.

In addition, the company also owns self-operated hotels such as Qiyun Mountain Free Home Tree House World, Bifengxia Cute Animal Theme Hotel, Bifengxia Wangyou Mountain Residence and Yiyang Space, Huangshan Sunriver Cloud Valley Resort Hotel, Danxia Mountain Free Home Resort Hotel, as well as two managed inns, Xiong's Mansion in Fenghuang Ancient City and Wanshou Palace Inn.

However, the newly opened hotels are still in the climbing period. Heavy-asset scenic spot hotels usually require 12 to 18 months, or even 1 to 3 years of market cultivation period, during which the occupancy rate and average room rate are generally low. In the first half of 2026, Danxia Mountain Culture & Tourism (including Danxia Mountain Hotel), a subsidiary of Sunriver Culture & Tourism, achieved operating revenue of 4.3963 million yuan, but its net profit lost 9.1522 million yuan, and the cash flow from operating activities was also -9.9608 million yuan.

On the other hand, some hotels with historical legacy problems or low operational efficiency continue to suffer losses due to outdated assets or poor operation. Only some mature hotels located in core scenic spots or with high-quality IP can maintain slight profits.

Overall, the hotel assets of Sunriver Culture & Tourism are almost all located in three resorts, two of which account for more than 80% of the total. Qiyun Mountain and Danxia Mountain take the majority share, and the remaining six hotels add up to less than 300 rooms in total.

Therefore, the hotels of Sunriver Culture & Tourism have distinct characteristics: all located in scenic spots, all are resort-type, and come with built-in passenger flow. But its hotels have never been profit centers, but tools to retain guests - to make tourists stay one more night, have one more meal, buy one more night tour ticket, and take the cable car one more time. For scenic spots, hotels are supporting facilities and entry points, not the final destinations.

This also explains why one resort of Qiyun Mountain has multiple brands such as Sunford, Baiyue, Yuehua and Tree House: it is not to build a brand matrix, but to cover different customer groups at different price points, so as to keep tourists staying on the mountain overnight as much as possible.

The scenic spot properties and passenger flow held by Sunriver Culture & Tourism are exactly what Zhejiang Tourism Investment lacks. A large part of the hotels under Radisson Hotel Group are urban business hotels, many of which are "entrusted" by the government or property owners, not obtained through market competition.

But most of Sunriver Culture & Tourism's hotels are located in scenic spots, so the hotel assets of the two parties form a strong complementarity. At the same time, the brand and operation capabilities that are absent in Sunriver Culture & Tourism's hotel assets are exactly the strengths of Radisson Hotel Group. What's more coincidental is the price adaptability: on Ctrip, the price of Qiyun Mountain Sunford starts from 349 yuan, Baiyue 387 yuan, Yuehua 428 yuan, and Tree House 988 yuan.

The main price range of the whole resort is between 300 yuan and 500 yuan, which is highly compatible with the price positioning of mid-to-high-end brands under Radisson Hotel Group, such as Radisson VeeGaa, Radisson Emana, Radisson Shijia and so on. Even some hotels of Radisson Manor and Plaza series can fall into the 300-500 yuan price range through preferential sales in off-seasons, non-holiday periods or through universal exchange packages. The two price ranges basically overlap, which means that even if the brands are rebranded, the main customer group will not change significantly, and seamless transition can be realized.

Although Zhejiang Tourism Investment entered Sunriver Culture & Tourism through the judicial auction path, as long as the 10% equity can finally be used for hotel resource integration to give full play to the complementary advantages of both sides, this deal is not a loss.

What Can These Resources Achieve

Sunriver Culture & Tourism has a "Sunkyuan Hotel Management Company" which was established in April 2023. The original mission of this company was to solve the horizontal competition problem with major shareholders, and it manages Xiong's Mansion and Wanshou Palace Inn in Fenghuang Ancient City. The annual report clearly defines its positioning: "In the future, it will give full play to its experience in scenic resort hotel management and actively expand hotel management business".

In other words, this company has practical operation experience and scenario resources of scenic resort hotels, but it lacks a brand. It is equivalent to a "shell" that has scenarios and experience but no strong brand endorsement.

Radisson has taken another path: in the past five years, it has adhered to the "separation of light and heavy assets", separated hotel management from hotel ownership, retreated to a light asset platform, and expanded through brand output. This has enabled it to accumulate brand awareness, membership system and industry ranking, but it has always lacked one thing - the scenic spot scenario. As a highly standardized urban hotel management platform, it has never found a smooth entry point to enter the scenic resort accommodation market.

As a result, the two pieces of the puzzle fit together. There is no need to buy assets or make heavy asset investment. As long as Zhejiang Tourism Investment takes over the management contracts and management team of Sunkyuan, and injects its brand and management system, the "Sunkyuan" shell will become the entry point for Radisson Hotel Group to enter the scenic resort hotel market.

The second point is passenger flow complementarity. Zhejiang Tourism Investment has two resources that Sunriver Culture & Tourism does not have. The first is Zhejiang China Travel Service Group, which ranks among the top 20 travel agencies in China, with mature group tour organization capabilities and passenger flow organization system, capable of transporting tourists from Zhejiang and the Yangtze River Delta to destinations on a large scale. The second is the membership platform "Yuelaihui" under Radisson Hotel Group - a membership system that can re-touch customers and activate repurchases, rather than a one-time traffic channel.

Sunriver Culture & Tourism has a real and solid traffic network in hand. In the first half of 2026, the passenger flow of Sunriver Culture & Tourism was 5.615 million person-times, an increase of about 9.98% over the same period of last year. The three scenic spots with the fastest growth rate are Qiyun Mountain in Anhui (+41.69%), Mangshan Mountain in Hunan (+36.75%), and Dayao Mountain Panwangjie in Guangxi (+44.77%).

Where do the passenger flows of these three places come from? The Yangtze River Delta is the largest source. And the Yangtze River Delta is exactly the hinterland that Zhejiang Tourism Investment and Radisson are most familiar with and have the deepest roots in.

For Sunriver Culture & Tourism, the significance of Zhejiang Tourism Investment is far more than "selling a few more rooms". For a long time, scenic spots and hotels acquire customers through OTA platforms, and the commissions have been eroding their profits substantially. With channel partners that can organize Zhejiang's passenger flow and re-touch customers through the membership system, Sunriver Culture & Tourism can take back part of the passenger flow from OTAs, reduce customer acquisition costs and increase per-customer value.

For Radisson Hotel Group, the scenic spot network of Sunriver Culture & Tourism is an opportunity for "Yuelaihui" to upgrade from a provincial membership card to a national system. Radisson's membership base is in Zhejiang, with concentrated scenarios; Sunriver Culture & Tourism has an annual passenger flow of tens of millions of person-times, so tourists who have stayed at Radisson series hotels in Zhejiang can continue to stay at Radisson hotels when they go to Qiyun Mountain, Mangshan Mountain and Dayao Mountain. When consumption scenarios expand from the province to the whole country, the membership frequency and stickiness can be truly amplified, and the membership system can have national value.

The last point is relatively harsh. Since the credit crisis of the "Sunriver system" triggered by the thunderstorm of Zhejiang Financial Assets Trading Center, the market value of Sunriver Culture & Tourism has evaporated sharply, public confidence has been lost, and its social reputation has been negatively affected to a large extent, which has not been settled to this day.

After Zhejiang Tourism Investment took shares in Sunriver Culture & Tourism, Sunriver Culture & Tourism's credit level has been improved to a certain extent; more importantly, if Sunriver Culture & Tourism intends to promote the securitization of packaged assets, this is exactly the endorsement that state-owned platforms can provide.

Even if Sunriver Culture & Tourism did not have a credit crisis, there are still many obstacles to packaging assets for REITs or ABS. Sunriver Culture & Tourism wrote in its asset replacement announcement in August 2023: the land and property of Xiong's Mansion are mortgaged, and the land and property of Wanshou Palace Inn are leased from a third party, so "the equity transfer cannot be handled for the time being".

Assets with unclear ownership cannot enter any asset-backed securities products. Whether it is REITs or ABS, they have extremely high requirements for the clarity of the underlying assets' ownership. If any problems such as mortgage, lease or transfer obstacle are not solved, the packaged listing is impossible to talk about.

Although the equity of the hotel company in Qiyun Mountain is clean, it cannot support a REITs on its own. Without a large-scale and stable asset package, the issuance cost cannot be diluted, and it lacks attractiveness to investors. To solve the ownership problem, integrate the asset package and promote the implementation of securitization, the credit endorsement and resource coordination capabilities of state-owned platforms are required, which private enterprises can hardly achieve.

What Does This Mean for the Cultural Tourism Industry

From a broader perspective, if this incident is only regarded as "Zhejiang state-owned capital rescued a private enterprise in Anhui", it will be underestimated.

In the past ten years, the expansion of private cultural tourism enterprises has almost followed the same path: scenic spots are responsible for creating stories, and surrounding real estate is responsible for returning funds, which are then used to support the operation of scenic spots.

Sunriver Culture & Tourism is a typical sample of this model, with total assets of 60 billion yuan and liabilities of 40 billion yuan, of which about 30 billion yuan of liabilities correspond to unsalable real estate assets. It faces the same debt pressure as other tourism enterprises in the same track such as Haichang Ocean Park and Sunac Culture & Tourism in recent years: it is not that the scenic spots are not profitable, but that the real estate cannot generate cash return.

Once the real estate cash flow breaks, the whole model collapses. From the day of the collapse, the scenic spots and hotels of these groups have changed their identities on the financial statements from "assets" to "assets to be disposed of". Obviously, the only possible buyers are state-owned platforms that have sufficient funds and do not pursue short-term returns.

So to be precise, it is not that state-owned capital is optimistic about cultural tourism, but that state-owned capital is called in to stabilize assets. If they were really optimistic, they would conduct due diligence, compare prices and negotiate at the auction scene, instead of only one party signing up for the auction, closing the deal at the starting price and making the final decision in less than ten minutes.

Sunriver Culture & Tourism has more than 40 scenic spots distributed in 14 provinces across China, including Qiyun Mountain in Anhui, Bifengxia in Sichuan, Fenghuang Ancient City and Mangshan Mountain in Hunan, Dayao Mountain in Guangxi... Now the Zhejiang state-owned platform has a say in the ownership of these assets.

This is a new thing in China's cultural tourism industry. In the past, the territory of provincial cultural tourism groups was basically limited to their own provinces, Zhejiang's assets belong to Zhejiang, Anhui's assets belong to Anhui, and each manages its own area. Now a provincial platform starts to hold scenic spots in another province, which will bring two results.

One result is that the local coordination cost will rise. Scenic spots rely on the cooperation of local governments, and factors such as transportation, land, approval and promotion are all controlled by local authorities. After the decision-maker is replaced by a non-local state-owned platform, this set of relationships needs to be rebuilt.

The other result is that the replicability will be enhanced. If Zhejiang Tourism Investment can manage the scenic spots in other provinces well, this structure of "provincial platform + cross-provincial asset package" can be replicated. There are more than 30 provincial cultural tourism groups in China, each of which wants to expand beyond its own province, while the high-quality assets within the province have an upper limit. The fastest way to expand out of the province is not to build new projects, but to make acquisitions.

For hotel management companies, a number of "new clients" will emerge. In the past two decades, the clients of China's hotel management companies have been real estate developers. Developers want their sales offices to look good and the room rate to be raised, so they are willing to pay for good brands.

What do state-owned platforms want?

What they want is that the management scale can be written into the official reports, the brands are their own, and the assets can be injected into listed companies. They do not care much about the RevPAR of a single hotel, but pay more attention to the number of hotels and rooms. Radisson is moving in the right direction: it has brands, membership system and the credit endorsement of the provincial state-owned platform, and it has obtained the entry point of scenic spot scenarios by taking shares in Sunriver. But when the brand price range cannot support sufficient premium, Zhejiang Tourism Investment with state-owned background may give opportunities to other hotel management companies.

But the real problem solved by state-owned capital shareholding is the financing cost. A provincial platform with AA+ credit rating has a bond issuing interest rate 3 to 4 percentage points lower than that of private real estate enterprises, which alone can greatly improve the financial statements.

The possible result is that the financial statements will