In Shanghai, Hyatt on the Bund and Grand Hyatt Shanghai will be joined by the new Park Hyatt Shanghai opening in July.

In Beijing, host city for the Olympics, Grand Hyatt Beijing will welcome the July arrival of the Park Hyatt Beijing. This marks the Park Hyatt brand’s arrival in China.
In April 2008, Grand Hyatt Guangzhou opens.
By 2010, Hyatt will have added nine additional properties in Greater China to significantly expand its regional portfolio.

Shanghai is home to three Hyatt properties. Hyatt on the Bund (a Grand Hyatt hotel), located in the Puxi District to the west of the Huang Pu River. Designed by U.S.-based firm Remedios Siembieda.

In the center of Pudong the Grand Hyatt Shanghai (seen in our illustration) occupies floors 53 through 87 of the Jin Mao Tower. All 555 rooms offer views from what is currently the highest hotel in the world.

The soon-to-open Park Hyatt Shanghai is located a stone’s throw away from the Grand Hyatt Shanghai on floors 79 through 93 of the 101-story Shanghai World Financial Centre.

This will take over from the Grand Hyatt as the highest hotel in the world when it opens in July of this year.

In Beijing there are two Hyatt, both on Chang An Avenue. Grand Hyatt Beijing is in the Oriental Plaza .
A ten-minute drive away, Park Hyatt Beijing will be open and ready for the Summer Olympics. Occupying the top floors of a 66-story tower in the Beijing Yintai Centre, the city’s first Park Hyatt will also be its highest hotel.

Over the next three years, Hyatt will continue to grow its regional network of distinct Hyatt brands with opening three additional Grand Hyatt properties (Grand Hyatt Guangzhou, April 2008 and Grand Hyatt Macau and Grand Hyatt Shenzhen in 2009) and Park Hyatt Ningbo Resort & Spa (2009).

Hyatt’s core Regency brand will significantly expand throughout the region with Hyatt Regency Beijing (2009), Hyatt Regency Nanjing (2009), Hyatt Regency Suzhou (2009), the new Hyatt Regency Hong Kong (2009) and Hyatt Regency Chengdu (2010).
Source: BusinessWire

Paris Hilton, the daughter all parents hope they do not have, who is also millionaire heiress to substantial shares in the Hilton hotel chain, is in Shanghai. She is not staying at any Hilton. (Which may well come as a relief to the Hilton management.)

She is staying at the newly opened Hyatt on the Bund.

An employee of MTV China, who asked not to be named said, ‘The panoramic Bund view from the hotel room seemed the major reason to attract her there. Hilton hopes to gain a better understanding of the city’s landmark charm within a limited time.’

And no doubt the city will be able to get a better understanding of the limited charm of Paris Hilton during her short visit.
Source: Shanghai Daily

Although there are still stories in some of the American press about the ‘genocide Olympics’ and profound articles as to whether there should be a boycott the tide is turning and the number of positive news stories is on the rise.

The LA Times, not known for its liberal and world-vision news, is positively burbling.
It writes that here are some of the things visitors will find going up around Beijing.

A third terminal at Beijing Capital International Airport. It is expected to welcome 43 million passengers a year and is seen in our illustration. It will come with a light rail line linking the airport to the city center’s Dongzhimen station in 18 minutes.
The 6,000-seat National Grand Theater has brought a bold, head-turning splash of modernism to the Tiananmen Square area.
Qianmen Street, with its small shops, tea houses and theaters, is being turned into a pedestrian mall, complete with a free tourist trolley and underground parking garage
Upscale shopping centers such as Oriental Plaza near Wangfujing and Shin Kong Place in the Central Business District have become commonplace in Beijing. But the Place, a new mall on the western side of the Central Business District, has something more than Adidas and Gucci: a 98-foot-wide LED screen suspended high over the courtyard, showing movies, promotional videos, satellite TV and shoppers’ own digitally uploaded photos.
Early in 2006, the China National Film Museum opened. The massive, state-of-the-art facility, has an Imax theater, four cinemas and a permanent exhibition on the history of Chinese film. Among its fascinations are a segment from
Ongoing restoration of some of the major sights in the Forbidden City, such as the Meridian Gate and the Hall of Supreme Harmony. Qianlong Garden is now being renovated.
In 2005, the Capital Museum, formerly near the Confucius Temple, moved to a striking new contemporary building near the Muxidi subway stop in western Beijing.
The city’s newest and most noteworthy avant-garde architecture — including Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas’ CCTV Tower — clusters in the Central Business District along the Third Ring Road on the eastern side of the city.
The ‘Bird’s Nest’, the 91,000-seat stadium, designed as a mesh of twisting steel beams by Swiss and Chinese architects, is already a Beijing icon. The water cube next door on the Olympic Green has a translucent blue Teflon skin to optimize sunlight while minimizing heat.
The list of new places to stay reads like an international hotel beauty pageant: Hyatt Regency, Four Seasons, Marriott, Ritz-Carlton. By the opening of the Olympics on Aug. 8, the Chinese capital will have 130,000 beds, not including those in hotels not inspected and certified by the city’s tourism organization. Rates are expected to increase during the Games.

It burbles on a lot more than that but it is a remarkable piece telling the readers that Beijing is the place to visit above all others. And it may well be right.
Source: LA Times

With the Olympic Games scheduled to hit Beijing next year, major hotel companies have scrambled to get new properties in China open in time.

Hilton Hotels operates six hotels in China (the one in Beijing is shown here), but will more than double that in the next few years. In late August it announced an agreement to manage a new Hilton in the Wangfujing district of Beijing, set to open next year, and also has scheduled to open in 2008 a Doubletree in Beijing, a Conrad in Shanghai and a Doubletree in Kunshan, as well as a resort and spa in Chongqing. Three other Hiltons are set to open in China by 2011. In June, a joint venture of one of Deutsche Bank’s investment arms and private equity firm H&Q Asia Pacific agreed to create and manage more than 25 hotels in mainland China under Hilton’s mid-price Hilton Garden Inn brand.
InterContinental Hotels now has 67 hotels open. IHG plans to nearly double that by next year, and future growth is particularly focused on Crowne Plaza.
Marriott International now has 27 properties in China, according to company spokesman John Wolf, and by 2010 will have 15 more: six under the Marriott brand, three under the Renaissance brand, two under the JW Marriott brand and four under Marriott’s mid-price Courtyard brand. In addition, the company will open six of its luxury Ritz-Carlton properties in China by 2010.
Hyatt Hotels & Resorts has announced plans to open in China 15 new properties — three Park Hyatt hotels, three Grand Hyatt hotels and nine Hyatt Regency hotels. China already has more Hyatt properties than any other country outside of North America.
Wyndham Hotel Group has announced an Asia-focused investment management firm is investing $50 million in the master franchisor of the Super 8 brand in China, Tian Rui Hotel Corp. The franchisor already has opened 49 Super 8 properties in China and has agreements in place to develop 67 more.

Even with all those growth plans in place, however, travel managers said the region would continue to be a challenge as travel to the region increases. Travel managers often have to look outside of hotel offerings when planning Asia/Pacific travel.
Source: Business Travel News Online

Grahame Carder VP, Marketing, Hyatt International Asia Pacific, heads Hyatt’s Asia operations. In anticipation of the Olympics, the new 66-story Park Hyatt Beijing should be completed by the end of the year. Hyatt plans to open at least 11 more hotels in China during the next three years.

Grahame Carder said, ‘The Olympics are dancing all across China. The equestrian event is going to be in Hong Kong. Qingdao is hosting sailing. Shanghai’s got some soccer. It’s as if an Olympics in Los Angeles had some events in New York and others in Atlanta.
That’s good news for the hotel industry. We expect to have eight or nine hotels around the country finished in time for the Games. We haven’t made this kind of commitment in any other part of the world.’

He went on to name the major problem.

He said, ‘The biggest challenge is staff. Every company, not just Hyatt, is struggling with finding and retaining a proper labor force. Filling key middle-management positions is very difficult. We hope one of the new hotels we are planning to build will be a mix of a hotel and a training school. The acid test for us is sustaining all this momentum after the Olympics, because the Games will move on and the hotels won’t.’
Source: Fast Company

The Hyatt Regency Xi’an recently appointed Adam Simkins as its new general manager (pictured right). Simkins joined the Hyatt International group in 1993 and has worked in several of its properties across the Asia Pacific region.

The 404-room hotel was built in 1990 and is located in Xi’an’s central shopping district. It has extensive meeting facilities - a large ballroom and five function rooms and a Club Zen Fitness Centre and Spa.
Source: PR Hyatt Regency Xi’an