China's pipeline at Q1 2016 stands at 2,448 projects with 549,222 rooms, indicating adecline in projects by 8% and rooms by 1%, on a year-on-year (YOY) basis, according to the latest China Construction Pipeline Trend report by Lodging Econometrics (LE).

Hotels under construction (1,789 projects with 375,638 rooms) constitutes 68% of the pipeline and is down 9% YOY.

Reflecting concerns about the slowdown in the economy and the availability of financing, announced projects are evidently slow to commence construction.

As a result, the number of projects scheduled to start in the next 12 months (294 projects/71,471 rooms) and those in early planning stages (365 projects/102,113 rooms) have hit new cyclical highs.