Fairmont and Swatch to renovate Peace Hotel

Shanghai: The Peace Hotel, an ageing colonial icon on Shanghai's scenic waterfront, will be renovated under a deal signed with Fairmont Hotels and the Swiss watchmaker Swatch.

Jinjiang International Hotel Management Co, China's biggest hotel operator and current owner of the Peace Hotel, announced plans to join with the two foreign companies in a notice posted on the website of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

Plans call for the owners to keep the hotel's design and art-deco highlights.

Jinjiang and Fairmont Hotels & Resorts Inc, a Saudi-controlled luxury hotel group based in Toronto, 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 southern wing of the Hotel will be renovated and managed by a joint venture between Jinjiang and a unit of the Swatch Group AG of Switzerland, Jinjiang said.

The 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 modern Chinese skyscrapers.

The 12-storey main building was the place to stay in the Shanghai of the 1930s and 1940s, attracting guests such as Charlie Chaplin, US General George C Marshall, and playwright Noel Coward, who completed his famous work Private Lives while staying at the Cathay.

Following the communist takeover in 1949, the hotel was renamed to drop perceived colonialist overtones and nationalised.