Beijing’s summer tourism season has been slow, and hotels and travel agencies say many potential visitors are being put off by tightened visa rules and scarce tickets to Olympic events.

Anthony Ha, general manager of the newly opened Marriott Courtyard Beijing Northeast (seen in the illustration) said, ‘We are not full at the moment, and we have rooms to fill. There’s not much time left, and we have a way to go.’

The city’s hotel industry, which has more than doubled its five- and four-star hotels offerings to 160 since Beijing was awarded the Olympics seven years ago.

A report last month from the Beijing Tourism Bureau that showed five-star hotels were 77% booked, and four stars were at 44%.

The average price of a five-star hotel in Beijing ranged from $560 to $1,150 per nightalthough some rates were reported as high as $2,000 per night during the Olympics. The four-star average was $325.

According to the bureau the number of foreign visitors to Beijing in May dropped by 12.5% from a year ago.

The shortfall in visitors coincides with new visa regulations that make it tougher for tourists and business executives to enter China.

Si Cunxia, sales manager of Travel China travel agency said, ‘A lot of the hotels overestimated their occupancy rate for July and August.’
Source: Associated Press

The Beijing Olympic Games are sparking fierce competition among hotel groups.

The US-based Hilton Hotels, which has five properties in China, hopes to have two more open by the end of July.
Marriott International has opened three hotels in the capital under the JW Marriott, Courtyard and Ritz-Carlton brands and increased its Beijing portfolio to seven. It is preparing to open two more, a Renaissance and a Marriott, in July.
InterContinental Hotels Group says eight more of its hotels will open this year in Beijing. The group already has nine hotels in Beijing.

Besides the new openings, many existing upscale hotels in Beijing, including New World Jing Guang Hotel, China World Hotel Beijing and Shangri-La Hotel Beijing, have redecorating and or expansion work scheduled for completion before the Games begin on August 8.

Lin Yuan, director of sales and marketing with Novotel Beijing Sanyuan said, ‘The Olympics is absolutely a golden opportunity, nobody would like to miss promoting themselves.’

There will be about 50,200 athletes, international workers, journalists, sponsors and their business clients who will be accommodated by 112 local hotels.

However, no hotel group is banking on just the Olympics. Sustainable economic growth is their goal.

The Beijing Tourism Bureau believes the number of overseas guests will grow at around 30 to 60% annually, rising to a peak in 2010, and the average occupancy rate will increase to more than 72% in 2009. A lot of hoteliers are praying that the Bureau’s projections come to fruition.
Source: China Daily

Marriott International plans to add 18 hotels in China, Hong Kong and Macau through 2012 with nine new ones to open in the mainland China starting as early as next year.

The new hotels will open between 2009 and 2012 in Nanjing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Huizhou, Suzhou and Beijing. It also said hotels under construction include properties in Shenzhen, Beijing, Hangzhou, Guangzhou, Macau and Hong Kong.

Ed Fuller, president and managing director of international lodging, added that deals to open hotels in addition to these have already been signed.

The 18 hotels will increase Marriott’s presence in China, Hong Kong and Macau to 59 hotels and extended-stay apartment buildings and 22,489 rooms.

He said it is possible Marriott will have as many as 100 hotels in the area in the next five or six years.

Henry Lee, area vice president for China said the company’s five hotels in Beijing are 90%-booked for August. Three additional hotels set to open before the Olympics are 40% booked.

The company’s brands include the Ritz-Carlton, Renaissance and Courtyard hotels. The illustrations both come from the Marriott in Guangzhou.
Source: CNN Money

Marriott International has opened a 333-room Marriott hotel in Ningbo under an agreement reached with Haicheng Investment.

This is a MICE hotel in that it has 1,188 square meters of flexible space. Included are a 720-square-meter ballroom that is divisible into eight sections and six additional meeting rooms.

The property is the heart of the central business district of Ningbo, a beautiful seaport city, within a mixed-used project containing a 38-story building that houses the hotel and office space.

The hotel faces the southern tip of Jiangbei across the Yuyao River, which is now home to a newly-redeveloped historic neighborhood housing restaurants and entertainment spots.

With the recent Hangzhou Bay Bridge opening, it is now only 2.5 hour drive from Ningbo to Shanghai.

Recreational amenities include a fitness center and an indoor swimming pool. And soon it will have a spa.
Source: FinChannel

The latest foreign firm to expand in China amid the country’s economic boom is luxury hotel group, Marriott International. It hopes to open 24 more hotels in China over the next three years.

Marriott Hotels which launched its first hotel in China in 1989, says with the pending Olympic Games, it will add over 1,000 rooms in Beijing. The U.S hotel group also has its eye on the MICE (meeting, incentive, conference and exhibition) market, which is rapidly growing across China.

Three new hotels trading under the names of Marriott, Renaissance and Courtyard by Marriott will be opened in the capital this year.

The big plans for the 24 new hotels will, of course, depend totally on what happens to the price of oil. If it goes up to $200 a barrel — which is possible but perhaps not totally likely — there will be a very quick revision of plans. If it were to stabilize at, say, $120 a barrel — again possible but not likely — then the hotels will boom. Our illustration is the impressive Marriott Guangzhou.
Source: BizChina

In aid of this year’s ‘World Earth Day’ on April 22, Mandara Spa at JW Marriott Hotel Shanghai will donate US$1 from each spa treatment to the Arbor Day Foundation. This is a non-profit US-based organization of nearly one million members that plants and promotes the conservation of trees. Mandara Spas worldwide are making similar efforts to support this cause.

Marriott International has recently signed an agreement with the State of Amazonas in Brazil to fund US$2 million to an environmental management plan to be carried out by the Amazonas Sustainable Foundation. Guests at Marriott hotels will be able to contribute to this fund by the end of the year.
Source: JW Marriott Hotel Shanghai

Courtyard by Marriott Beijing Northeast is due to open at the end of March. It will be located between Lido Commercial District and Wangjiang High Tech Park, and lies close to The Olympic Green in Chaoyang district.

A press release from the hotel described it as the first Courtyard brand in the Asia Pacific region to have a ‘fresh new outlook and identity that is trendy and energizing to cater to modern business travelers’.

Courtyard comes under the Marriott International brand, its hotels are moderately-priced and cater mostly to business travelers. They have another hotel in the capital, without the northeast bit - Courtyard by Marriott Beijing.
Source: PR Courtyard by Marriott Beijing Northeast

Being listed in Travel and Leisure Magazine’s ‘Top 500’ Hotels is an accolade. It has just happened to the JW Marriott Hotel Shanghai which has been listed in the 2008 World’s Best Hotels survey ‘Top 500 Hotels’.

Every year, the Travel and Leisure Magazine puts together a team of reporters to assess hotels around the world using a list of criteria. This includes the property’s range of facilities, number of rooms as well as any unique attributes which separates them from other accommodations.

Each hotel is then given a score out of a possible 100 points. The JW Marriot Hotel Shanghai scored 84.03 points.

The JW Marriott Hotel Shanghai opened in late 2003 and has been presented with a number of awards including ‘2005 Best New Business Hotel in China’ by Business Traveler China as well as ‘2006 Best Business Hotels Award’ by Forbes China.

Ritz-Carlton president and chief operating officer, Simon F. Cooper said that the company expects to open seven hotels in China and triple the country’s share of its total revenue to almost 20% by 2010.

The luxury-hotel operator, owned by Marriott International, is opening its fourth China property in Beijing next week, marking the start of a major expansion in mainland China.

Including the new Beijing hotel, which Mr. Cooper said has among the biggest standard-size rooms in Beijing, the company runs 69 hotels and resorts world-wide.

Marriott International, InterContinental Hotels Group PLC and Wyndham Hotels & Ritz-Carlton opened its first China hotel in Shanghai in 1998.

In addition to the Beijing location opening next week, Ritz-Carlton plans to open hotels in Guangzhou, Shenzhen and the southern resort city of Sanya in the next three months.

Simon Cooper said Ritz-Carlton’s growth strategy isn’t only to fill its new hotels with domestic travelers but to build the Ritz-Carlton brand within China so the rising number of outbound Chinese tourists will stay at Ritz-Carlton properties abroad.

He said, ‘I think you’re going to find a very sophisticated outbound Chinese traveler who is going to seek out luxury hotels wherever they go. As people acquire wealth and sophistication, they will graduate’ from staying at low- to mid-price hotels.

Ritz-Carlton’s new hotel in Beijing is fully booked for the Olympics but the company’s goal will be to continue performing after the Olympics. He is optimistic, because, he said, running a hotel in a growing market like Beijing is easier than in mature markets.
Source: Wall Street Journal

J.W. Marriott, Jr., chairman and CEO, Marriott International, has officially designated the 23-story, 588-room JW Marriott Hotel Beijing as the company’s ‘3,000th’ property.

Marriott’s global growth is unprecedented in its 80-year history, adding more than 100 hotels through the first half of 2007. Over half of the company’s full-service hotel development pipeline is outside North America.

By the opening of the 2008 Olympics, Marriott expects to operate 11 hotels in Beijing to help accommodate the two million visitors expected to visit the city. Another 20 Marriott International-branded hotels are scheduled to open in China through the year 2010.

At the moment it futures plans are to to reach a total of nearly 600,000 rooms, including 120,000 outside the U.S.

The JW Marriott Hotel Beijing is owned by Hua Mao Surapan Hotel Development Company and has opened along with the 305-room The Ritz-Carlton, Beijing. Both hotels are in China Central Place. The illustration is of the Loong Bar in the Marriott. The name brings to mind the famous Long Bar in Shanghai. No connection between the two.