The Sino-U.S. memorandum of understanding (MOU) on tourism means that Chinese will be able to travel to the United States in groups on tourist visas. Currently, the United States issues only business visas to Chinese. The travel business expects a surge of travel.

A manager with China International Travel Service (CITS), China’s biggest travel service, said, ‘Everything will be in place only when we know how the MOU will be implemented. Some U.S. travel agencies are coming to us as well.’

Most travel agencies interviewed plan to promote tours linking Los Angeles, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Washington D.C., New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Diego and Hawaii, at an average cost of RMB25,000 yuan (US$3,351) per person.

Liu Yanwen, manager of U.S. section in China Travel Service (CTS), China’s second largest travel service, said, ‘Although very inviting, the U.S. tour will keep some potential travelers away because of the tight visa interview procedure and the comparatively high expense.’

The European Union does not require visa interviews for tourists in groups. A tour covering 12 European countries costs about RMB16,000 yuan (US$2,162).

And Liu Yanwen said the transport costs in Europe are also lower than those in the United States.

She said, ‘Many Chinese people are curious about America as they are already familiar with it through Hollywood movies. So I am quite optimistic about the U.S. travel market.’

Source: People’s Daily Online

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

It is not easy being the PR for the French company hotel Accor. They have enough brands ranging from Ibis at the lower end (think high quality inexpensive) to the outright luxury end which is the Sofitel and that is moving up a fraction — not an easy trick — while Accor is positioning Pullman as an upscale hotel somewhere between the first-class hotel Sofitel and Novotel. The group aims to re-define the concept of business accommodation to make Pullman a dedicated place for living and corporate conferences.

At lunch a Novotel executive asked us — two journalists who have been working since there were wolves in Wales — if we had ever heard of Pullman. Ha!

The term Pullman was used to refer to railroad sleeping cars which were run by the Pullman Company (founded by George Pullman) in the United States. As a result (the PR person did not know this which makes one lament for modern education) every Pullman attendant thereafter was named George in his memory.

Indeed, in the splendid scene in the movie The Sting, where the card game is being manipulated on a Pullman, the organizer was the porter, name George. The real name of the actor has Larry Mann. (All of this is known because the writer used to work with one of the co-producers.)

Pullman did not keep up the insistence on staff nomenclature when the trains came to Europe. They were run by the Pullman Company or were lounge cars operated by the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits.

Specifically, in Great Britain, Pullman refers to the lounge cars operated by the British Pullman Car Company. Of which the most famous example was the Brighton Belle between London and Brighton. Sir Laurence Olivier traveled on it every day. When they dropped kippers from the breakfast menu he wrote in mighty protest. So British Rail closed the line. British Rail was like that in those days.

Gilles Pelisson, the chief executive officer of Accor, undoubtedly knows all this which is why he is the boss. He 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.’

The phrase upper-upscale is, I think, one we can live without. Probably reads better in the original French.

Next year, Gilles Pellison said the Pullman network would have 45 hotels operating in 23 countries in Europe, Asia Pacific, the Middle East and Latin America. By 2015, the company will have 250 Pullman hotels around the world.

In the Asia Pacific region, the Pullman brand will expand rapidly this year, with openings throughout Thailand and China. Further extensive development is planned throughout the region over the coming years, with an estimate of about 40 hotels in operation by 2010.

Note these are hotels not trains. A true Pullman train needs a smooth and well maintained track to work properly. In parts of Asia these are in short supply.

One idea to set the brand differently to the other competition is that Pullman will provide every client with a personal manager to take care of any problem around the clock. The company said, ‘Honesty and transparency are our testimony. The hotel wants to offer good value for money, so whatever a client pays, they will get double.’

Thus the concierge won’t be like George in The Sting. That George organized bent poker games.

For the first time ever, 31 leading Chinese tourism officials met with more than three dozen U.S. state tourism directors during a day long summit in Charlotte, North Carolina, to explore ways for the two countries to increase cooperation on travel-related matters.

In 2006, according to the Office of Travel and Tourism Industries, China and the U.S. shared a total of 3.68 million visits, (this includes visitors to and from mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan). But with the rapidly growing exchange between the two countries in trade, culture, education and health care, tourism exchange between the both countries has a great potential and a bright future.

The summit also explored ways to improve structures between the national tourism administrations of the two countries. Efforts were made to actively explore opportunities for cooperation and exchange among the Chinese provinces and the American states.

Roger J. Dow, President and Chief Executive Officer at the Travel Industry Association and seen in our illustration, based in Washington, DC. said, ‘We can learn a lot from each other. During the next 10 years, the amount of travelers from both countries is expected to grow significantly. It makes sense that we explore ways to encourage travel to our respective countries.’

The summit was arranged by the Travel Industry Association (TIA), in conjunction with the China National Tourism Administration (CNTA). The National Council of State Tourism Directors, an industry council housed within and administrated by TIA, also participated in the summit.
Source: Hospitality News

31 leading Chinese tourism officials met with more than three dozen U.S. state tourism directors during a day long summit in Charlotte, NC, to explore ways for the two countries to increase cooperation on travel-related matters.

The idea is to increase the two-way tourist traffic volume between the two countries. In 2006, China and U.S. combined reached a total of 2.35 million visits.

Efforts were made to actively explore opportunities for cooperation and exchange among the Chinese provinces and the American states.

Dr. Du Jiang, Vice Chairman of the China National Tourism Administration, led the delegation of 31 tourism directors from various provinces, municipalities and regions of China.

During the next ten years, the number of travelers from both countries is expected to grow significantly.
Source: Hotel Interactive

The number of overseas visitors to Beijing reached 3.2 million in the first nine months of this year, up 12.6% from a year earlier.

The Beijing Municipal Bureau of Statistics said in a statement that the figure breaks down into 2.8 million foreign tourists, up 14%, and 400,000 tourists from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, up 4.1%.

The United States, Japan, the Republic of Korea remain the three largest sources of overseas tourists to Beijing, with the numbers standing at 444,000, 435,000 and 341,000 respectively, up 19.4%, 22% and 7%.

It is thought that ‘Olympic factors’ have mainly boosted the tourism growth. The amount of publicity that Beijing is getting in the foreign press is unparalleled.

More visitors are expected to come to Beijing next year when the games actually happen.

According to BOCOG, which is running the games, China will host 280,000 athletes, referees, journalists and other workers from more than 200 countries and regions.

The official estimate is that about five million overseas tourists and more than 120 million domestic travelers will visit Beijing in 2008.
Source: China View

The ‘Golden week’ holidays should be changed. In fact, many were under the misunderstanding that a decision had been made to scrap ‘Golden week’ holidays. It would not be an unpopular decision.

According to a survey released by Ctrip and published in the Beijing News half of Chinese travelers want to abolish all ‘Golden week’ holidays, except Spring Festival.

Most wanted to retain the seven-day Spring Festival holiday when Chinese celebrate the lunar new year and which is a very important occasion of family reunion.

Ctrip is the largest consolidator of hotel accommodation and airline tickets for China’s individual travelers.

About 14% of the respondents supported scrapping all three ‘golden week’ holidays and 49.4% wanted to scrap or change the May Day and National Day ‘golden weeks’ and retain the Spring Festival holiday.
If the government scrapped one or more week-long holidays, 60.1% favored compulsory paid vacation in their place to allow every worker to arrange their own holidays.
53.3% of respondents believed the biggest advantage of the ‘golden weeks’ was ‘the right to rest and take a paid vacation’.

Paid vacation has been implemented in some joint ventures in big cities, like Beijing and Shanghai, by which workers arrange their holidays in accordance with the employer’s situation.
Source: China Daily

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

Citigroup’s property investment arm plans to invest in a hotel owned by China’s Ginwa Enterprise, part of the U.S. investment bank’s program to acquire shopping malls and hotels in China’s major cities.

Citigroup will soon sign an agreement with Ginwa to invest in its five-star Howard Johnson Ginwa Plaza Hotel, in the northwestern city of Xian. It did not say how big a stake Citigroup was buying or for how much.

In February, Citigroup raised $1.29 billion in its Asia opportunities fund and plans to invest $600 million of the fund in China and $400 million in India.

David Schaefer, Asia head of Citigroup’s property investment arm, said in April that the Citigroup fund had already made three investments in Shanghai, including buying a 75% stake in the Novel Plaza office building, but was looking at up-and-coming second-tier cities including Xian and Chengdu in the west, as well Tianjin, which neighbours Beijing.

The Chinese government last year imposed restrictions on foreign investment to curb overseas speculation and a surge in domestic property prices.
Source: Reuters

A pointer to how large outbound China travel is becoming is provided by a credit card. China Union Pay, China’s own credit card, set up in 2002, is one of the fastest growing credits cards brands across the world, without any marketing campaigns about its buying power.

One reason for its massive increase is that the 34 million Chinese that traveled overseas last year all acted as unofficial brand ambassadors. In Australia, National Australia Bank has teamed with China Union Pay so that Chinese tourists can make EFTPOS purchases and ATM withdrawals with their credit and debit cards. Banks in the United States, Germany and Egypt are among the others following suit.

The travel industry worldwide sees China as the single most important development in world tourism. The Economist Intelligence Unit estimates there will be 60 million tourists from mainland China by 2010 and 100 million by 2015. On the other hand the WTO believes the 100 million figure will be reached later, in 2020. Either way it is an immense change in world tourism.

Last year, 15 countries and regions opened their doors to Chinese tourists. To date, Chinese travelers can visit 132 destinations. Among the newest to be approved are Oman, Morocco and Syria.

In a sense, everyone is trying to get into the act. Now Turkey is trying to attract tourists from China. Turkey only receives between 40,000 and 50,000 of the 132 million Chinese traveling the world each year. Even if two per cent of them went to Turkey each year they would represent half the tourist trade.

The United Arabs Emirate and China are close to signing the Approved Destination Status agreement. Under ADS, Chinese nationals will be able to obtain a single-entry visa to the UAE.

Once in full effect, it will significantly increase the opportunity, for example, for Dubai to push it’s attractiveness for tourism and MICE (meetings, incentives, conventions and exhibitions) markets. This, of course, could be a two way traffic.

Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Al Saud’s Kingdom Hotel Investments earlier this year bought the Swissotel Kunshan for $58 million. This 387 rooms is new in that it only began operating two years ago. Now Kingdom Holdings has reportedly earmarked $1 billion for investment in China’s booming hotel industry.
Source: TTN