China Post Group is trying to get out of the hospitality business and concentrate more on delivering the post on time. It has listed 30 of its star hotels from its stable of 400-odd ones on Shanghai United Assets & Equity Exchange for asset trading. The one in the illustration is in Harbin.

This in response to the call by Premier Wen Jiabao who at the recent annual session of the National Committee of the CPPCC said State-owned companies should overhaul themselves by gradually moving away from their non-core businesses.

Ren Yongxin, deputy general manager of the Finance Department under China Post Group, told the China Daily, ‘We will focus only on postal services in the future, and sell or transfer first our hotel assets and then the ones in other sectors.’

There are more than 400 hotels under China Post Group, but it selected the top 30 for the trading experiment.

Most of the group’s hotels are rumored to be running at a loss but Ren Yongxin refused to comment on this. Instead he said, ‘There’s no problem with profitability, the initiative is aimed at sharpening our core competence’. Which you can take to mean they are running at a loss.

He allows that as the 2008 Beijing Olympics draws near ‘a professional hotel operator could do a better job than us in helping these hotels perform better and improve their brand equity.’

‘We are likely to finalize the deals on the 30 hotels by the end of 2007, and will then come out with the next batch. By the end of 2008, all the 400-odd hotels will be available for trading on the SUAEE.’

It has been suggested that budget hotel franchise chain Home Inn is seriously looking at what is for sale but probably the same could be said of any mid-level hotel chain operating.
Source: English People’s Daily Online