Ritz-Carlton is the quiet performer in luxury hotels. For many traveling executives of the higher levels of management it is the automatic hotel of choice. Now there is the Ritz-Carlton, Guangzhou which is the fourth in China with new openings scheduled for Sanya, Shenzhen, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Macau in the next two years.

Set in the Tianhe District, the Ritz-Carlton, Guangzhou occupies the 20th to 38th floors of a modern building. The hotel offers 351 guestrooms with distinctive amenities and views of the Pearl River. The entry level guestrooms are spacious at 50 square meters.

This is the seventieth Ritz-Carlton and they all have something in common. The first is the daft idea that the word ‘the’ before the title should always be capitalized. Not quite as daft as the way the InterContinental used to insist on Inter.Continental, but close.

The second is the quite amazing staff service.

They truly treat people staying at the hotel as honored guests. The writer can think of individual hotels that achieve this standard but no other chain of hotels that manages it. Quite remarkable.

There is a story which should be followed up that the staff has the right to offer a credit on the spot if something is wrong. It would not surprise me

There are also The Residences at the Ritz-Carlton which are located in the same building as the hotel and accessible by a separate entrance and lobby, The Residences features 91 serviced residences with from one to four bedrooms ranging between 111 to 275 square meters. This is where you would stay if you were going to be there for a long time and did not have to worry about money.

This is also a MICE hotel — for up-market MICE — with more than 1000 square meters of space, including a 648-square-meter ballroom.
Source: Asia Travel Tips

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

CCB International Group Holdings will take control of a 40% stake in a company that owns the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Hong Kong. Now it gets a bit complicated and explains why trying to make finance news interesting is, sometimes, a tad difficult.

Lai Sun Development has entered into an agreement to sell to CCB International Group a 16.57% interest in Diamond String, which owns the Ritz Carlton here, for US$73 million.
Lai Sun Development indirectly owned 76.57% of Diamond String.
Under the terms of the disposal, Lai Sun has agreed to form a strategic alliance with CCB International for joint redevelopment of the property for long-term investment purposes.The transaction also involves CCB International taking up a shareholder’s loan.
CCB International is also buying additional stakes in Diamond String.
Lai Sun said that three other minority shareholders of Diamond String have agreed to sell a combined 23.43% to CCB International.
These share sales will take the total interest that CCB International will hold in Diamond String to 40%.

Under the terms of the disposal, Lai Sun has agreed to form a strategic alliance with CCB International for joint redevelopment of the property for long-term investment purposes.

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

Galaxy Real Estate has entered into an agreement with Ritz-Carlton Hotels to manage and operate a hotel within the Galaxy Center in Shenzhen, which is becoming a new commercial landmark in the Central Business District of the city.

The project is being developed by Galaxy Real Estate, a leading property developer in Shenzhen. With a total gross floor area of over 120,000 square meters, the Galaxy Centre will integrate high office, retail and hotel use within the development.

The structure associated with the Galaxy Center was topped out on June 30, 2007 and the project is expected to be fully operational by mid 2008. (The illustration IS of a Ritz-Carlton but not in Shenzhen. It is, in fact, in Sarasota but the style will be the same.)
Source: eMediaWire

China World Hotel Beijing, Garden Hotel GuangZhou, and Portman Ritz Carlton Shanghai (our illustration is of its platinum swimming pool) were recently approved as China’s first batch of ‘platinum five-star hotels’.

Shao Qiwei, head of the State Tourism Administration, awarded certificates and plates to the three hotels at a ceremony held in Beijing.

Hotels can apply for the title in future, but only a limited number of them would get approved.

The question is whether there is any value to these grading systems apart from publicity. In some countries the situation has approached the levels of farce with some hotels claiming they are seven star hotels — whatever that might mean. For the record this is a seven star site — which means absolutely nothing at all.

This escalation in classifications means that, eventually, the classifications beginning to lose their validity. What point is there in being a five star hotel if someone can claim they are a five star platinum hotel. And where do you go from there? Escalate the number of stars or look for a more precious substance.

There are many people who would not want to stay in a hotel graded in that way. For many tourists it is off-putting.
Source: People’s Daily Online

China Central Place in Beijing’s Central Business District, providing more than 230,000 square meters of office space, 160,000 square meters of retail shopping space and eight residential areas. Plus three soon-to-be operational luxury hotels.

Sofitel Wanda is expected to open this summer, followed by Ritz-Carlton Beijing and JW Marriott Hotel Beijing, both part of the same group, are scheduled to open in the fourth quarter.

The 590-room Marriott is the brand’s third in China, along with Shanghai and Chongqing. The 305-room Ritz-Carlton is the country’s fourth — adding to Guangzhou, Shanghai, and Beijing’s Financial Street.

Because of the hotels’ close proximity, the Marriot and Ritz-Carlton will be jointly operated under the same sales, marketing and finance groups — a first for Marriot.

Robert J. Lohrmann will be the managing director of The Ritz-Carlton Beijing and JW Marriott Hotel Beijing, overseeing two general managers. The illustration is from The Portman Ritz Carlton but it neatly gives you the idea of the standard of luxury to expect.
Source: People’s Daily Online