The Peace Hotel (
Jinjiang International Hotel Management Co (
Plans call for the owners to keep the hotel's historic design and art-deco highlights.
Jinjiang and Fairmont Hotels & Resorts Inc, a Saudi-controlled luxury hotel group based in Toronto, Canada, are setting up a joint venture to renovate and manage the best-known northern wing of the hotel, located at the corner of Shanghai's Nanjing Road shopping street and the waterfront Bund, the notice said.
The 78-year-old hotel closed this month, with construction work expected to last about two years, it said.
The southern wing of the Peace Hotel will be renovated and managed by a joint venture between Jinjiang and a unit of the Swatch Group AG of Switzerland, Jinjiang said.
That wing, to be known as the Shanghai Swatch Art Center Co, will be transformed into an art center and also house flagship stores for international brand watches, it said.
Jinjiang, the largest tourism conglomerate in China's biggest city, owns some of Shanghai's choicest historical hotels.
But the state-run company has been struggling to acquire the international managerial expertise it needs to compete with the dozens of topflight global hotel operators setting up operations in China.
It faces competition along the Bund from some of the biggest names in retailing -- many other colonial buildings have already been revamped and house fashionable boutiques, restaurants and galleries.
But the company's decision to joint with foreign companies in upgrading the Peace Hotel raised some eyebrows.
"South Wing: Artists Only Welcome," said a headline in the local newspaper, the Oriental Morning Post.
The Peace Hotel opened in 1929 as the Cathay, built and owned by Iraqi Jewish tycoon Victor Sassoon, who resided in a pyramid-shaped rooftop penthouse that has inspired the look of scores of Chinese skyscrapers.
The 12-story main building was the place to stay in the 1930s and 1940s, attracting famous guests such as actor Charlie Chaplin and US General George Marshall.
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