Louvre Hotels-Golden Tulip said yesterday it had signed a deal with a Chinese partner to build two hotels on Hainan island, intending to operate 50 hotels in China by 2015.

Louvre Hotels bought the Dutch upper range hotel chain Golden Tulip in 2009, and is linked to Starwood Capital.

It has already opened three hotels in Shanghai where it has also opened an office.

The group chief executive Pierre-Frederic Roulot told AFP that the first two hotels, of 400 and 200 rooms on Hainan island, should soon be followed a third.

“The construction of five other hotels in China could be announced in the first half of 2011,” he said.

Louvre Hotels-Golden Tulip, the eighth-biggest hotel group in the world, wanted to develop in China at first with the brands Royal Tulip, Golden Tulip and Tulip Inn, mainly in big towns and tourist areas, Roulot said.

In a second stage, the group would open budget hotels under the brands Premiere Classe and Campanile.

The target was “very quickly to have 50 hotels open, that’s in five years, to have a strong network base,” he said.

The group, which operates in 41 countries, manages about 1,070 hotels and wants to open at least 120 this year, of which about 40 would be in France.