One the world's leading hotel and tourist chains, the Accor (Worldwide) Group, signed a contract with Shanghai Lianyang Group on Thursday to build its first Ibis hotel -- the Lianyang Ibis -- in Shanghai.

Ibis Shanghai, the first venture of the Accor French hotel management corporation in China will be located in the center of Lujiazui international financial zone.

Construction of the hotel, which will have 300 rooms, will begin in May and is scheduled for cor completion in early 2008.

Accor is already building an Ibis hotel in Qingdao, a coastal tourist city in East China's Shandong Province, which will be opened at the end of this month. More Ibis hotels are planned for a dozen major cities across China including Beijing, Chongqing, Hangzhou, Fuzhou and Wuhan.

As the first international hotel management company to enter China in 1985 Accor has focused on developing middle to high-class hotels. I operates 14 Sofitel hotels, eight Novotel and two Mercure across the country.

With booming business from tourism the economical hotel chains like Ibis have become the new focus of Accor's hotel marketing strategy in China. Their aim is to develop a comprehensive hotel chain across China. Accor is to open 43 hotels in China with 24 of them being Ibis.

Accor has built up its hotel business in more than 140 countries worldwide. It has 168,000 employees and annual revenues of 7 billion Euros.

Another French concern, Lafarge Company, a building material giant, is to invest US$150 million in expanding its cement business in Southwest China between 2006 and 2010.

"Lafarge's business is expanding from Southwest China to the whole nation and will be sustainable in the long-term," said Cyrille Ragoucy, CEO of Lafarge China, on Thursday.

The French building material giant has set up a new firm called Lafarge Shui On Cement Guizhou Business Unit, in Guiyang, capital of Guizhou Province.

The CEO explained the company's interest in Southwest China was result of there being less  competition compared with East China. UIncreasing investment from the Chinese government in recent years and vigorous infrastructure development provided great potential for development of  cement manufacture and supply.

"There are few high-tech cement enterprises in Southwest China so Lafarge may find their markets are at the high-end of the construction industry," he added.

At present the company has three cement factories in Guizhou with an annual production capacity of two million tons.

The Lafarge Shui On Cement Guizhou Business Unit is a subsidiary of Lafarge Shui On Cement which in turn is a joint venture between Lafarge Group and Hong Kong Shui On Construction And Materials Limited (SOCAM).

(Xinhua News Agency April 21, 2006)