If it was not enough to announce its new Pullman line Robert Murray, Accor’s assistant president for the Greater China Region said global hotel chain Accor plans to open between 15 and 26 hotels under its economy hotel brand name of Ibis in 2008 and 2009 in China.

By the end of 2008, Ibis will be in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Suzhou and Harbin. The Ibis hotels are expected to serve businessmen in the country’s second-tier and third-tier cities, where costs are relatively lower.

Accor has opened 12 self-run Ibis hotels in China since its entry, compared to many other foreign hotel giants, which mainly manage hotels for local businesses.

There is still room for the growth of the Chinese economy hotel market, said Robert Murray, who disagrees with the widespread belief that it would suffer a hard landing in the near future.
Source: Trading Markets

The first Sofitel Wanda hotel in the northern Chinese city of Ningbo will be opened at the end of this year. The construction of the hotel’s main body had been finished.

The hotel will be operated by Accor with its luxury hotel brand of Sofitel, in cooperation with Wanda Group, a private real estate company.

It is the fourth round of cooperation between the two companies in the hotel field in China. They have set up three Sofitel Wanda hotels in Beijing, the southwestern Chinese city of Chengdu, and the northeastern Chinese city of Harbin. Our illustration is of the Sofitel Wanda in Chengdu.

Sofitel was established in 1964, opening its first hotel in Strasbourg, France. In 1974, it expanded to the United States of America, opening a hotel in Minneapolis. In 1997 it became part of the French hotel group Accor. Now it is well established in China.
Source: Trading Markets

Accor, Europe’s largest hotelier,will open five Pullman hotels in China by 2010, part of plans to grow its three-month-old Pullman brand globally.

The Pullman brand, which was launched last December and targets mainly business travellers, will tap Asia’s fastest growing business travel and conference markets, Accor Asia Pacific Chairman Michael Issenberg said in the statement.

Accor said last May that it expected to double revenue from Asia in three or four years by ramping up a plan to expand across China, aiming to have as many as 160 hotels in operation or under development across the country by 2010, compared with 103 at that time.

The first Pullman hotel in China was opened in Dongguan, a city in southern Guangdong province, while another four will be opened in cities including Beijing and northern Tianjin.

Pullman derives its name from the opulent Pullman railway carriages that redefined overnight railway travel in the United States, and later in Europe in the 1860’s. They were started by George Pullman.

In 1867 Pullman introduced his first hotel on wheels, the President, a sleeper with an attached kitchen and dining car. The food rivaled the best restaurants of the day and the service was impeccable.

A year later in 1868, he launched the Delmonico, the world’s first sleeping car devoted to fine cuisine. The Delmonico menu was prepared by chefs from New York’s famed Delmonico’s Restaurant.

Traditionally, all Pullman head porters were called George in memory of the founder. There is no suggestion that this tradition will be followed in the hotels.
Source: Reuters

Accor Asia Pacific boss Michael Issenberg, is packing up and moving the company’s regional headquarters to Singapore. He said the siren call of China and India — where Accor is now developing 100 hotels with plans for many more — has proved impossible to resist.

Michael Issenberg said, ‘It was inevitable and could not be put off any longer. The weight of development is now in Asia — we now have more than 330 hotels through the Asia-Pacific region, with more on the way.’

Issenberg sees the biggest opportunities in China.

He said, ‘China is unbelievable — what a future it has. I know my own industry is booming but that is only one small part of a very large picture — I can’t even imagine what is happening elsewhere.’

More than anything else, Michael Issenberg says it’s the speed of change that is most confronting.

He cites an Accor development near Hainan Island in which a 440-room ‘absolutely deluxe five-star hotel’, a 1,500-seat convention centre, a road and bridge were built in just 11 months.

He said, ‘In other places you are shown master plans and it may or may not happen, but in China it always does.’

Accor is putting its own money into the country and wants to own 200,000 rooms in China by 2010. It’s already well on the way, with 60 Ibis budget properties under construction in high-growth areas.
Source: The Australian

Major companies such as Marriott International, the Intercontinental Group, Accor of France and Shangri-La of Hong Kong have built networks and are expanding aggressively through the country.

According to the World Travel & Tourism Council the China market — now the sixth largest — is expected to become the world’s second biggest in ten years.

Joe McInerney, president of the American Hotel & Lodging Association, said, ‘It’s irresistible. It is a tremendous market for hotels. And the opportunities are enormous.’

Bruce McKenzie, regional VP for Greater China at Intercontinental, the oldest Western hotel operator in China, said, ‘There’s no doubt that it is an absolutely key market and we have a comprehensive growth strategy.’

IHG, which has been in China for 23 years, currently has 67 properties there. It plans too open 125 more by the end of 2008. The company’s workforce will almost double to 43,000 over the next three years.
Accor already operates 50 hotels there under its Sofitel, Novotel and Ibis brands, has announced plans to open or start developing more than 180 hotels by 2010 most of which will be under the Ibis, one star, brand.
Shangri-La, Asia’s biggest listed hotel chain, plans to raise at least $662 million to add to its 19 hotels in China.
Marriott International, which opened its first hotel in China in 1989, plans to go from 25 to 48 properties between now and 2010 and to 100 within the next five to six years.
Wyndham Worldwide by the end of this year will have 20 Ramada Inns, 13 Howard Johnsons, 11 Days Inns, 50 Super 8s.
Best Western will double its stable of hotels to 28 by end of this year.

Source: CNBBC

Times look good for the backpacker hotels. There are a lot of backpackers around.

Times look even better for the economy hotels especially in China. Offering a clean, well maintained room for the night with Internet access means boom times. Look to see the number of economy hotels expand by at least five times, perhaps more, over the next few years.

At the top, the super-luxury hotels where someone else is typically paying the bill all seems to be well. There are spas, shopping arcades, superior restaurants, concierges who seem to use telepathy to guess what you want. All of it comes at a price but there are apparently many willing to pay that price.

It is in the middle echelons that times are hard, where the independents, and to a lesser extent, the chains, face lean times.

Some of the mid-range chains are rebranding to make themselves more attractive.

Holiday Inn, the world’s biggest hotel chain, is spending, as a first stage, US$1 billion in rebranding.

Accor, the French hotel giant, is going to push Sofitel from being merely an upmarket chain to a luxury brand.

The writer had an amazing lunch in the Sofitel Wentworth last week — someone else was paying — where the food, the wine and the service were worthy of a good restaurant in Paris. Except no Parisian restaurant has, I promise you, a female Irish Japanese sommelier.

There is a problem. If a mid-level hotel spends enough money to push it up at least one, preferably two levels, you are talking very serious money. Most independents in China at this level cannot afford it. They will have to either repackage as a budget hotel or suffer.
Source: Times on Line

A most excellent article by Jon D. Markman analyzes the economy hotel situation in China from an investment perspective. It is totally positive. You can read the whole article by clicking on Source at the end.

He writes that there is a rising need for more hotels. Domestic tourism is growing at 10.4% per year and will amount to 8% of China’s national GDP by 2017, according to government statistics, compared with 5.4% today.

Biggest growth area is budget hotels. 90% of Chinese travelers stay at budget inns where they can find standardized rooms, comfy beds, great locations near business centers, free Internet access, hair dryers and ironing boards for the equivalent of $22 per night.

The leading brand for inexpensive hotels Home Inns and Hotels Management, which reported $95 million in revenue in the past 12 months and $5.4 million in income.

Analysts report that the number of budget hotels has grown from fewer than 100 in 2003 to around 1,300 this year.

Home Inn executives, several of whom were founders of the successful travel agency Ctrip.com International, say that they plan to add 100 hotels a year to achieve that 60% annualized growth rate.

Home Inns is believed to own about 18% of the market, a percentage point above its older but slower-growing arch-rival, the Jin Jiang Inn chain.
Accor, the French chain, has announced plans to open 20 of its Ibis budget hotels over the next year.
Motel 168, a slightly more upscale chain seen in our illustration, is backed by Morgan Stanley.
7 Days Inn is being backed by Warburg Pincus.
The Super 8 hotel chain already has 49 budget hotels in China.

These are all, perhaps, paltry numbers with an industry still in its infancy.
Source: The Street

Sofitel Riverside Qingyuan is claimed to be the first internationally-branded 5-star hotel in Qingyuan, in the Pearl River Delta.

A hour’s drive north of Guangzhou, Qingyuan is the fastest-growing city in Guangdong Province. It has broken records for GDP growth (up 23.3% in 2006), foreign trade, foreign investment, fixed-asset investment, and productivity growth.

By the end of 2006, 221 projects with a total investment of RMB50 billion were underway in Qingyuan and there are more than 1,000 foreign enterprises, processing and assembling enterprises operating within the urban district. The region is also a popular tourist area.

The Sofitel Riverside Qingyuan has 368 guest rooms and suites, with half overlooking the Beijang River. This is definitely a MICE hotel with extensive meeting facilities and over 1,800 sq meters of function space, including a Grand Ballroom and three smaller meeting rooms.

The new name is Pullman. Accor is positioning Pullman as an upscale hotel somewhere between the first-class hotel Sofitel and Novotel. Think of Pullman as being designed for the upmarket business traveler and you have it about right.

Gilles Pelisson, CEO of Accor and seen here, said ‘The idea of Pullman is to fill a position in the five-star sector that is left by moving Sofitel higher in the market. We are raising the Sofitel brand’s standards to what is called upper-upscale in Europe, and Pullman will fit into the five-star sector under Sofitel and ahead of Novotel.’

In China the Pullman brand will expand rapidly this year and there should be about 40 hotels in operation in the Asian region by 2010.

Pullman tries to differentiate itself from rivals with technology like broadband access and a television set with built-in information systems. Which, in truth, does not seem that unique. But the customer also gets a personal manager to take care of any problem right around the clock.
Source: Hotel and Motel Management

Accor said it has agreed to develop 62 new hotels in China, which, in addition to existing expansion plans, will bring its total network in the country to 180 by 2010 from 50 currently.

As part of this extra expansion, Accor will open three more hotels in Beijing before the 2008 Olympics, bringing the number of its hotels in the city to seven.

So who is Accor? You could put up an argument that it is the most varied, and possibly the largest, hotel grouping in the world. It was started in 1967 and has, moving from the top to the bottom of the de luxe scale, Sofitel, Novotel, the Mercure Network including Dorint, Libertel, Orbis Hotels, Parthenon Apartments and All Seasons, Ibis, Etap, Formule 1 and many other, lower profile chains located in the USA and in Canada including Motel 6 and Red Roof Inns.

All Seasons hotels are mainly in Australia, Dorint and Orbis in Central Europe, and Parthenon Apartments in Brazil. Accor also runs cooking schools, travel companies and casinos. If you travel and stay in hotels a lot you will undoubtedly at some point stay at an Accor establishment. They are ubiquitous.

Accor stressed its development in China will cover all segments of the market. It is easy for it to make that promise because it runs hotels in every segment of the market. At the top end there will be more 5 star Sofitel hotels.

In the economy segment, Accor said a further 50 Ibis hotels are either under construction or in advanced stages of planning.

The company said 2007 will be a record year for Accor hotel openings in China with over 20 hotels already launched. And in May that it will develop 40 Ibis hotels in China as part of an expansion program for the chain in Asia.

In June, the China Daily cited Accor China vice president Robert Murray as saying the group planned to open 80 hotels in China over the next two years.
Source: Forbes