Louvre Hotels Group and the American Magnuson Hotels Worldwide had already been working on this partnership for a year.

Louvre Hotels Group, its parent company, Jin Jiang Hotels, and Magnuson Hotels Worldwide - three hotel operators each with more than a thousand hotels on a vast continent, Europe, China, North America - announced the signature of a partnership agreement this Monday, June 29, giving rise to a major distribution alliance that will gradually combine their different web sites to allow room reservations in one of the three zones covered.

Mr Chen, Thomas Magnuson and Pierre-Frédéric Roulot

Louvre Hotels Group and the American Magnuson Hotels Worldwide had already been working on this partnership for a year and the takeover of the prior by Jin Jiang Hotels International made it possible to further expand the virtual distribution platform that was being prepared.

The agreement relies on the geographic complementarity of the locations of the three groups' properties that include 1,000 hotels each, with a concentration of their supplies in the midscale, 3* and 4* ranges, for a global hotel supply of 3,700 properties on the Asian, European and North American markets.

"Thanks to this partnership, the properties of the Louvre Hotels Group will be able to capture the large source of North American travelers to destinations where we are present and offer a more complete supply to all of our clients. We thus expect to seea 3% increase in arrivals at our hotels in the short term," rejoices Pierre-Frédéric Roulot, President and CEO Louvre Hotels Group.

"This international alliance represents a formidable opportunity for our network of independent hoteliers in North America and strengthens the role of Magnuson and Louvre Hotels Group on their international markets," explains Tom Magnuson, CEO Magnuson Hotels Worldwide.

In addition to this reciprocal distribution agreement, through which each group will be present on the web site of each of the two other partners, synergies will be sought out in terms of technological development, global negotiation of corporate contracts, and balance of power with OTAs to lower the commission rate.

The loyalty programs will also be accessible to new clients of any one of the groups, which will give more opportunities to "consume" points earned at one of the partner groups in Europe, Asia or North America.

From September 1, Louvre Hotels, Magnuson Hotels and Jin Jiang Hotels will migrate a hundred or so selected properties each month, giving preference to those with the ability and opportunity to accommodate international clientele. All the inventories will thus be shared by the end of 2016.

"The beauty of the operation is that it is very simple," insists Pierre-Frédéric Roulot. "We make all our reservation systems synergistic, without trying to create an additional tool. Each site is already individually visited by tens of millions of visitors, who will now have the opportunity to reserve in regions where we didn't all have properties individually."

For the president of Louvre Hotels, as the balance between the three continents was already respected, it would not be useful to look for new partners as this would only make the decision process more difficult without bringing any major contributions.

On January first 2015, Magnuson Hotels Worldwide (which has headquarters in London) was the twentieth hotel group worldwide in terms of number of rooms with 78,720 units in 1,615 properties according to MKG Hospitality, consulting firm founded by Georges Panayotis. Louvre Hotels Group, meanwhile, was bought by the Chinese group Jin Jiang International, which ranks 10th with 241,908 rooms in 2,208 properties.