The Pullman Sanya Yalong Bay hotel opened on February 3, 2008. It faces the South China Sea. The hotel opened on February 3 and has 77 rooms and 115 villas (all with private swimming pools) and 9 adaptable meeting rooms. The hotel can host more than 800 people on the occasion of congresses or seminars, in particular with its Pacific Grand Ballroom, which can accommodate up to 350 people. Which makes it, beyond doubt, a MICE hotel.

Pullman is a new Novotel brand and the aim is that by 2009, the Pullman chain will offer 59 hotels (15,600 rooms) in 23 countries covering Europe, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and South America. ooking forward, Pullman plans to build a global network of 300 hotels by 2015, with new hotels being added at the rate of 25 per year.

CEO Gilles Pélisson said, ‘Pullman will be one of fastest-growing brands of the Accor Group, especially in the Asia- Pacific region. The brand will expand rapidly this year, particularly in China. In 2009, we plan to open 18 hotels in the Asia-Pacific region, with the ultimate aim of around 100 Pullman hotels here.’

Novotel sees Pullman as a perfect fit with the Group’s overall portfolio, because its market positioning is complementary to the other non-standard brands of Sofitel, Mercure and All Seasons.
Source: eBlackboard

Accor Asia Pacific boss Michael Issenberg, is packing up and moving the company’s regional headquarters to Singapore. He said the siren call of China and India — where Accor is now developing 100 hotels with plans for many more — has proved impossible to resist.

Michael Issenberg said, ‘It was inevitable and could not be put off any longer. The weight of development is now in Asia — we now have more than 330 hotels through the Asia-Pacific region, with more on the way.’

Issenberg sees the biggest opportunities in China.

He said, ‘China is unbelievable — what a future it has. I know my own industry is booming but that is only one small part of a very large picture — I can’t even imagine what is happening elsewhere.’

More than anything else, Michael Issenberg says it’s the speed of change that is most confronting.

He cites an Accor development near Hainan Island in which a 440-room ‘absolutely deluxe five-star hotel’, a 1,500-seat convention centre, a road and bridge were built in just 11 months.

He said, ‘In other places you are shown master plans and it may or may not happen, but in China it always does.’

Accor is putting its own money into the country and wants to own 200,000 rooms in China by 2010. It’s already well on the way, with 60 Ibis budget properties under construction in high-growth areas.
Source: The Australian

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

The new name is Pullman. Accor is positioning Pullman as an upscale hotel somewhere between the first-class hotel Sofitel and Novotel. Think of Pullman as being designed for the upmarket business traveler and you have it about right.

Gilles Pelisson, CEO of Accor and seen here, 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.’

In China the Pullman brand will expand rapidly this year and there should be about 40 hotels in operation in the Asian region by 2010.

Pullman tries to differentiate itself from rivals with technology like broadband access and a television set with built-in information systems. Which, in truth, does not seem that unique. But the customer also gets a personal manager to take care of any problem right around the clock.
Source: Hotel and Motel Management

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

Accor is Europe’s biggest hotel group. It is is a large French multinational corporation, which runs chains of hotels and restaurants. Some of these you will have heard of, others not.

Start as it were at the top and work down: Sofitel, Novotel, the Mercure Network including Dorint, Libertel, Orbis Hotels, Parthenon Apartments and All Seasons, Ibis 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. On the seventh day it rests.

Now Accor expects to exceed its plan of opening more than 61 hotels in China before 2010, stepping up expansion in what is its main growth market.

Accor Asia Pacific managing director Michael Issenberg said driving that will be rapid growth in business travelers using budget hotels such as its Ibis brand. He said, ‘We have a target of 100 Ibis hotels to be opened and committed by 2010. Tourism is definitely growing in China and we shouldn’t underestimate that, but most of the hotels we’re opening are targeted towards business travel, particularly the Ibis hotels.’

He said in two to three years, Accor expects China to account for 25% of its hotels in Asia Pacific, up from 15% now. In expanding its Ibis budget hotel network it is going head to head with aggressive Chinese hoteliers such as Jin Jiang, the country’s largest chain, and Home Inns. The winner in this will be the traveler.
Source: The Edge

A soft opening — no drums, no bugles - for the Novotel Baiyun Airport Guangzhou. It has 460 rooms and is next to the newly opened Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport. That makes it, depending on traffic, 20 minutes from Guangzhou’s Huadu Commercial District with easy access to the Guangzhou International Convention and Exhibition Centre.

This is a MICE hotel in that it has a pillarless ballroom (very important for making major presentations where all of the audience needs a clear line of sight to the speaker), another large multi-purpose meeting room and 13 function rooms.
Source: TTG Travel Hub

Novotel hotel is the first international hotel at Guangzhou new Baiyun International Airport (seen here), and it is already open for business. It takes only five minutes for transit passengers to get from the airport to their rooms.

This is not the only development of the Accor group, the brand owner of Novotel and many other groups such as Sofitel. It also plans to build a five-star Sofitel Hotel at the junction of Tianhebei Road and Linghedong Road.

The total investment of the Novotel style four-star hotel was RMB420 million. It has 460 guest rooms, a multi-function meeting room, fitness facilities, an entertainment center, a swimming pool and a business center. It is intended principally for business travelers.
Source: Newsgd