Blackstone to become biggest hotel concern with Hilton buy: consultancy

PARIS - Private equity giant Blackstone Group will become the world's biggest hotel concern with its purchase of Hilton Hotels Corporation, replacing Britain's InterContinental Hotels, the MKG Consulting cabinet said Wednesday.
The company will be adding Hilton, with more than 2,800 hotels and 480,000 rooms, to a list of hotels it has purchased over the past two years.
They include Westin Trianon Palace in Versailles, the US budget hotels Quinta and Lone Star France, it said.
With the purchase of Hilton it will have a total of some 600,000 rooms, of which 560,000 are wholly owned.
InterContinental Hotels, which has had the number one ranking for the past four years, on January 1 had more than 3,700 hotels and 550,000 rooms throughout the world.
It is followed in size by the American chains Wyndham and Marriott.
Under the terms of the agreement announced Tuesday Blackstone will buy Hilton Hotels Corporation in an all-cash deal worth 26 billion dollars (19 billion euros), one of the largest such takeovers ever.

07/04/2007 18:21 GMT