Rendezvous Hotels & Resorts International will manage a new hotel to be built in Shanghai. The 4 star, two hundred room hotel, to be opened under Rendezvous’ The Marque Collection of Hotels brand, will be named the Marque Hotel Yu Garden, Shanghai and is due to open in mid-2009.

This is the second property to be announced under the Marque brand in China, after the Marque Hotel, Guilin, which will open later this year. The new hotel will complement Rendezvous’ existing property, Rendezvous Merry Hotel, Shanghai which has operated successfully since 2004.

The developers are Shanghai Sin Tat Lee Property Development. It will incorporate the Marque Hotel Yu Garden, Shanghai into a 17 storey, multi-use complex with threeapartment buildings and a shopping mall on the podium levels.

Centrally located on He Nan Road South, just a few hundred meters away from the famous Yu Gardens and 1.5 km from the Bund Area, the hotel is close to Shanghai’s CBD. Hotel facilities will include a café, lobby bar and conference rooms.

A gym, out-door swimming pool and other leisure facilities will be located in a Club House on levels 6 and 7 of the hotel building. The illustration is of the Marque in Sydney which shows that there is a solid, basic standard which is very affordable.
Source: eTravelBlackboard

Yuzi in Chinese means ‘fool’ or ‘fooling yourself’, so the art park Yuzi Paradise near Guilin in southern Guangxi province could simply be called a Fool’s Paradise. Except that it also houses one of the world’s largest modern sculpture gardens and workshops, and a boutique hotel - the Hotel of Modern Art (HOMA). It opened on April Fool’s Day in 2003, seven years after construction first began.

Since then it has hosted 11 International Sculpture Symposia and sponsored some of the world’s top sculptors from 47 countries, who have created over 200 works that make this place an international focal point for modern sculpture.

Yuzi has spectacular desert gardens featuring hundreds of species of cacti, many from Australia and other desert climates.

It also has two high-end hotels:

HOMA Libre is a 46-room luxury boutique hotel and the only Chinese hotel member of the French Relais & Chateaux association.
HOMA Sutra is a 118-room conference oriented hotel.
Both have fully equipped spas and business centers.

If you are staying for a week or more, you can participate in creating your own art-work using the facilities of the atelier and its skilled artisans. You pay for the raw materials and create your own work. Research seems to indicate there is no other hotel in the world that offers this facility.

Yuzi Paradise has another 500 hectares that it can expand into, and there are plans to build a series of caves for a Zen retreat experience of meditation and spa treatments.

This is not an inexpensive hotel with a de luxe twin costing US$320. The hotel has its own Yuzi Paradise website which is quite as remarkable as the hotel. The first illustration shows what part of it looks like. The rest is just as good. The second illustration is a map placing the hotel.

About 400 Chinese tour guides took to the streets of the southwestern city of Guilin to protest over a reporter who wrote that they took kickbacks. (At some time in the future we might see a similar protest by reporters who are reported by tour guides as taking kickbacks. And the story would not be totally false.)

The Guilin Daily, published in the scenic tourist city in the Guangxi region, and the reporter had since apologized saying the report had ’caused some bad effects’, according to another newspaper, the Southern Metropolis Daily.

Tour guides blocked the gate of the municipal government and some nearby roads in Guilin, demanding that the reporter apologize.

The Guilin Daily published a story saying some tour agencies and guides took kickbacks from shops and hotels. (The fact that there is undoubtedly at least some truth in the story is besides the point. It is publishing it that causes the offense. And think not this only applies to Guilin or even just China. In Australia guides get serious kickbacks for taking tour groups of overseas visitors into, chosing an example at random, opal shops.)

Huang Dan, the vice-mayor of Guilin said guides petitioned the government for three days. He said, ‘There was no clash and no one died or was injured. All the guides have since been persuaded to go home.’
Source: San Diego.com

The soon to be opened The Marque Hotel, Guilin, will be managed by Rendezvous under The Marque Collection of Hotels brand. This will be the first of this brand in China.

Strong growth of tourism is expected within the Guilin region. The hotel is expected to be ready by December 2007, will have a quiet opening and then a grand opening in February 2008.

Guilin Tourism Board forecasts a continuation of double-digit growth for visitor numbers in 2007 and a major spike of an additional 12% in association with visitation to China for the Olympic Games in 2008.

Rendezvous Chief Executive, Mr. Alan Featherby, said, ‘We are delighted to be working with Guilin Tai Lian Real Estate Company Limited to bring this modern and innovative hotel project to fruition as the first Marque Collection of Hotels in China.’
Source: Travel Daily News