Swissôtel Grand, Shanghai will open on March 30, 2008 which will probably be a soft opening which means the hotel has a little time to shake any minor problems out.

It is less than five minutes’ walk away form Nanjing West Road, the city’s busiest shopping, entertainment and commercial center which has Jiu Guang City Plaza, Plaza 66 and Citic Square. It is about 50 minutes from Pudong International Airport and 20 minutes from Hongqiao Airport, and is close to popular attractions such as the Jing’an Temple, Shanghai Grand Theatre and Shanghai Museum.

It has 467 and 15 suites. Smoking and non-smoking rooms as well as rooms for the disabled are available.

Located on 5th floor of the hotel is the Spa & Fitness, featuring four individual treatment rooms and two luxurious VIP treatment rooms. There is also a comprehensive fitness center and an indoor heated swimming pool along with a childrens’ wading pool which seems an excellent and thoughtful addition.

This is a MICE hotel in that the hotel has over 1,190 square meters of meeting and conference area including multi-purpose function rooms equipped with the latest technologies, suitable for meetings, VIP business functions, social events or weddings.

Swissôtel Hotels & Resorts is owned by Fairmont Raffles Hotels International which has over 80 hotels in 25 countries worldwide under the Raffles, Fairmont and Swissôtel brands.
Source: eTravelBlanckboard

Fairmont Hotels & Resorts will run the 25-story Fairmont Beijing, in the Central Business District location, starting next year. This hotel will have 235 rooms.

The announcement comes five months after Fairmont started restoring the Peace Hotel in Shanghai.

The property owner, Thailand-based Reignwood Group, said it has a 20-year management agreement with the hotel operator. Yu Bin, project pre-opening director of Reignwood, said the Canadian management team will come to Beijing next month, and recruitment will start in November.

The construction of the building will be completed by the year-end, and the pre-opening is scheduled for next May.

He noted that in 2009, Beijing’s hotel sector will experience a short-term downturn after the Olympics climax, and ‘we believe Fairmont will help us go through the period smoothly. After all, the supply of hotel rooms in Beijing is still not enough.’

The 100-year-old Fairmont has 51 hotels in 12 countries, and more than 20 properties are currently being developed.

Peace Hotel Shanghai, seen here, will open in 2010. Hong Kong and South China’s Hainan Province will be Fairmont’s next destinations.
Source: China Daily

With the 2008 Olympics looming, Beijing is one of the hottest development markets in Asia. But the rest of China is not far behind. Key demand drivers in China: rising prosperity of population, more ‘approved destination status’ locales, low-cost airlines, improving infrastructure, including major highway systems.

Upcoming Olympics in Beijing in 2008 and World Expo in Shanghai in 2009 mean an accelerated development pace.

Labor, ‘with no easy answers,’ is the biggest challenge going forward; training and retention will be top of mind for the foreseeable future as hotels compete among each other and other growing sectors.

Scott Woroch, senior vice president of development, Asia, for Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts, which has 12 announced Asian projects in its pipeline, explains that addressing those issues is easier in China. He said, ‘From airports to bridges — things that assist with movement of people — those issues in China are a bit easier because the government is involved.’

Tom Storey, executive vice president, development, Fairmont Raffles Hotels International. ‘In China the bigger issue is having the right partners — period. If you have the right partners who have done a lot of transactions with Chinese government, that helps get entitlements.’

Tom Storey says the company is focused on finding the right partners for the key gateway markets. Raffles just debuted in Beijing. Swissôtel will open in Shanghai in late 2007 and China’s Guangdong Province in 2008.

Also addressing the growing demand for mid-market product, Accor is targeting most of its expansion to the budget and mid-market. Michael Issenberg, managing director, Accor Asia Pacific, said, ‘70% of our business in China comes from the domestic market, and while the expansion of our luxury Sofitel brand will see the international component of our business increase (a new flagship Sofitel Wanda Beijing will open this year), domestic business to our economy and mid-tier Ibis, Mercure and Novotel brands will grow at an even faster rate.’

The majority of these hotels will be concentrated in regional centers and secondary cities that offer new business parks and transport hubs.
Source: Hotels

Hirsch Bedner Associates, which is probably the best known hospitality design consultancy in the world, will manage the historical restoration and adaptation of Shanghai’s landmark Peace Hotel. When renovated the hotel will be managed for Jin Jiang by Fairmont Hotels & Resorts and plans to reopen in 2010 as the Fairmont Peace Hotel Shanghai.

Michael Bedner, Chairman and CEO of HBA/Hirsch Bedner Associates, said, ‘The Peace Hotel has been a Shanghai landmark for more than a century and is the most famous hotel in China, and arguably throughout Asia. It is our intention to recreate the grandeur and majesty of this major Asian landmark, and restore it to its place as one of the world’s finest hotels.’

The press release states: ‘The Peace Hotel was first conceived by successful British trader Victor Sassoon in 1929.’ And, yes, he was a trader whose family had built its major fortune on opium and then become respectable.

Victor Sassoon, who once served in the British air force, became permanently lame as the result of a plane accident, and was know as Lame Sassoon. He was a formidable man — he opened more than 30 companies and became the king of real estate in Shanghai. The Peace was his crowning hotel achievement and opened on the Bund as the Cathay Hotel. In later years it was renamed The Peace Hotel and become the most enduring symbol of the decadent international glamor of Shanghai in the 1920s and 1930s.

How well will it be restored?

In 2003, HBA restored the Hotel Grande Bretagne in Athens, a hotel which was originally created in 1874. And they did a most wonderful job for it now looks like the original, only a lot better. The detailing throughout was inspired by the original 1843 palace, which had fluted columns, ionic capitals, mosaic floors and was generally quite the article. If they do the same with the Peace as they did with the Grande Bretagne it will be very splendid.
Source: eHotelier

Jin Jiang International Group and Fairmont Hotels & Resorts have formed a joint venture company which will renovate and reopen The Peace Hotel, a Shanghai landmark for over a century. The hotel is scheduled to close during the refurbishment period and reopen in 2010. Jin Jiang’s goal is to restore the hotel to its position as the definitive luxury hotel of Shanghai. It is doing this in partnership with Fairmont which runs, among other things, London’s Savoy and New York City’s Plaza Hotel.

The Peace Hotel is on the Bund facing the Pudong area over the Hangpu River. It was first opened in 1929 as the Cathay Hotel on the site of the Sassoon Mansion and the hotel was run by the Kadoorie brothers who went on to found The Peninsula in Hong Kong. The architectural style of the Peace was Gothic (in the Chicago style) with a copper-sheathed roof rising 77 meters above ground level.

If you went to Shanghai before the war this is where you stayed. General Marshall, Charlie Chaplin, Bernard Shaw and Noel Coward (it is alleged on very little evidence that he wrote Private Lives while in residence.)

Jin Jiang, owner of the Peace Hotel, is the largest hotel owner and operator in China and the 22nd largest in the world, with more than 300 properties in its portfolio.
Source: Hotel Online