hotels'>AccorHotels will acquire Mövenpick Hotels & Resorts for a cash amount of CHF560 million (€482 million) later this year, subject to regulatory approvals. The deal is expected to be completed in the second half of 2018.

Founded in 1973 in Switzerland, Mövenpick Hotels & Resorts operates in 27 countries with 84 hotels and a particularly strong presence in Europe and the Middle East. Mövenpick also plans to open 42 additional hotels by 2021, with significant expansion in the Middle East, Africa and Asia-Pacific.

“With the acquisition of Mövenpick, we are consolidating our leadership in the European market and are further accelerating our growth in emerging markets, in particular in the Middle East, Africa and Asia-Pacific,” said Sébastien Bazin, chair and CEO of AccorHotels.

“The Mövenpick brand is the perfect combination of modernity and authenticity and ideally complements our portfolio. Its European-Swiss heritage is a perfect fit with AccorHotels. By joining the Group, it will benefit from AccorHotels’ power, particularly in terms of distribution, loyalty-building and development. This transaction illustrates the strategy we intend to pursue with the opening up of AccorInvest’s capital: to seize tactical opportunities to strengthen our positions and consolidate our leaderships, as well as leverage our growth.”

Accor acquired FRHI – whose luxury brands with a spa presence include Fairmont, Raffles and Swissotel – in mid-2016, and in late 2016, it bought a five per cent stake in luxury operator Banyan Tree.

Andrew Gibson is vice president of wellbeing for Accor Luxury, with Lindsay Madden-Nadeu and Aldina Duarte Ramos splitting the duty for overseeing spa and wellbeing for Accor’s six luxury brands: Raffles, Fairmont, MGallery, Sofitel, Swissôtel and Pullman.

While Movenpick doesn’t have a unified spa concept across its hotels, they often operate substantial spas, including the recently renovated 6,000sq m Dead Sea Spa in Jordan, the newly opened Mövenpick Hotel du Lac Tunis and the Movenpick Resort & Spa Jimbaran Bay in Bali.