Rendezvous Hotels & Resorts International will manage a new hotel to be built in Shanghai. The 4 star, two hundred room hotel, to be opened under Rendezvous’ The Marque Collection of Hotels brand, will be named the Marque Hotel Yu Garden, Shanghai and is due to open in mid-2009.

This is the second property to be announced under the Marque brand in China, after the Marque Hotel, Guilin, which will open later this year. The new hotel will complement Rendezvous’ existing property, Rendezvous Merry Hotel, Shanghai which has operated successfully since 2004.

The developers are Shanghai Sin Tat Lee Property Development. It will incorporate the Marque Hotel Yu Garden, Shanghai into a 17 storey, multi-use complex with threeapartment buildings and a shopping mall on the podium levels.

Centrally located on He Nan Road South, just a few hundred meters away from the famous Yu Gardens and 1.5 km from the Bund Area, the hotel is close to Shanghai’s CBD. Hotel facilities will include a café, lobby bar and conference rooms.

A gym, out-door swimming pool and other leisure facilities will be located in a Club House on levels 6 and 7 of the hotel building. The illustration is of the Marque in Sydney which shows that there is a solid, basic standard which is very affordable.
Source: eTravelBlackboard

Hilton Hotels has signed a management agreement with China Merchants Property Development Company for the Conrad Beijing.

The Conrad Beijing will have 200 hotel guest rooms and 100 serviced apartments and will feature a variety of restaurants and extensive meetings facilities including an auditorium and a ballroom with a capacity for more than 500 people, as well as a full facility spa and health club. Which makes it a MICE hotel.

The Conrad will be located on Chang An Avenue, between the Second Ring Road and the Third Ring Road in the Chaoyang District, where the Friendship Store will be turned into a 200,000 square meter mixed-use development.

The hotel will take up approximately a quarter of the development and the rest will be made up of grade A offices and a large multi storey retail space. Chang An Avenue is the center of China’s political, economic and cultural activities and is known as the ‘First Street of China.’

Koos Klein, Area President Hilton Hotels Asia Pacific said, ‘The Conrad Beijing will be a stunning addition to our growing portfolio of luxury properties in China, building on the success of the Conrad Hong Kong which opened in 1990 and our upcoming Conrad Shanghai which opens in August this year.’

The Conrad Beijing is scheduled to open at the end of 2010. The Conrad name comes from the founder of the Hilton chain.

Conrad Hilton was born on Dec. 25, 1887, in San Antonio, New Mexico. He bought his first hotel in Cisco, Tex., in 1919 and soon bought others in Dallas, Fort Worth, and Waco. In 1946 he formed the Hilton Hotels Corporation. He is the person in our illustration.

Source: eTravel Blackboard

The Westin Beijing, Financial Street has been officially certified a five-star hotel by the China Tourist Hotel Star-Rating Committee. It has only been open a year and is the second Westin in mainland China (the other one is The Westin Bund Center, Shanghai).

GM Charlie Dang said, ‘ We are very happy to be certified as a five-star hotel just after one year of operation. We will continue our focus on guest experience, and present the unique Westin lifestyle in this enchanting capital.’

According to the hotel, this ‘lifestyle’ is provided through services such as its Heavenly Spa by Westin, Westin Heavenly Bed, Service Express, Westin Workout and Westin Kids Club.
Source: PR The Westin Beijing, Financial Street

In May last year, the first tenants moved into the office tower of Park Place, a multi-use retail, office and hotel development in Shanghai’s downtown Jing’an district. Mid-2008 (exact date to be announced) is expected to see the opening of its PuLi Hotel and Spa, which has been described as the city’s first luxury ‘urban resort’. (It’s managed by Hong Kong-based Urban Resort Concepts, whose managing director, John G. Laing, is pictured first on the left).

The idea of the hotel, it says, is to give a ‘contemporary’ take on luxury which includes 22 floors of 209 rooms and 20 suites, a 24-hour butler service, flat-screen LCD TVs/DVD players/MP3 docking ports in every room, an Anantara spa, a 32-meter Long Bar, a ‘Library’ and a ‘Wine Cellar’.

Other people pictured are, left to right, Patrick Chen, director of Park Place; Christine Hodder, the hotel’s general manager; and Markus Engel, director and co-founder of Urban Resort Concepts.
Source: PR The PuLi Hotel and Spa

Shangri-La plans to open two hotels in an affiliated company’s development in Shanghai in 2011.

The Jing An Shangri-La will have 347 rooms on 24 floors of a 58-story Grade A building. Shangri-La will also have 600 rooms in the new 43-story Jing An Kerry Centre. Both hotels will be in a development on Nanjing Road in the city’s Puxi section.

Shangri-La is expanding beyond Asia into North America and Europe. The group runs 55 hotels and has more than 48 projects in development in 15 countries including India, the United States, Austria and Maldives. Kuok is also the controlling shareholder of Kerry Properties, the real estate developer active in Hong Kong and China building the hotel, office and shopping center project in Shanghai that will be home to the two Shangri-La hotels.

The illustration is of the Shangri-La in Bangkok but it gives you the idea of what to expect.

Dubai-based Jumeirah hotel group looks to build ten hotels in China by the end of 2010. This will be the group’s largest expansion into Asia.

Tricia Warwick, Jumeirah VP Sales, said in Gulf News, ‘We are looking all over Asia for new developments but China is a key market. Two-thirds of our 16 hotels in Asia will be in China.’

So far Jumeirah, famous for the Burj Al Arab the world’s tallest all-suite hotel and seen in our illustration, has plans for three properties in China located in Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou.

The HanTong Jumeirah Shanghai was recently voted the ‘Most Anticipated Hotel’ in Shanghai at the 2007 World Traveller Awards China chapter although it is very difficult to get excited about an award which seems to have been invented purely for the sake of making an award.

Scheduled to launch August this year, the 338-room hotel is curiously said in the press release as being ’set to take advantage of post-Olympic crowds.’

There is very little evidence that Olympic Games, once they are over, bring crowds of visitors. Or are these business people who have delayed until the games are over?

Currently in Dubai, Jumeirah has four properties under construction. Within three years, the hotel group intends to hold a global portfolio of 57 properties.
Source: eTravel Blackboard

Shanghai is awaiting approval of mainland China’s first Disneyland, and the theme park could be (this is far from definite) built on an island in the Yangtze River

A Shanghai city spokeswoman, who like many Chinese officials refused to give her name, said Shanghai was waiting for approval of the project by the central government. She would not comment further.

Walt Disney, which has set up office in Shanghai, has repeatedly emphasized that for now it is focusing on developing its theme park in Hong Kong, which opened in 2005 and, in truth, is not doing nearly as well as Disney would wish..

Disney Asia-Pacific spokeswoman Alannah Goss said, ‘China is a priority for the entire company. We have a continuing dialogue about a variety of Disney initiatives, including television, motion pictures and consumer products, of which theme parks are only a part.’

Perhaps. Possibly. Maybe.

The state-run magazine Oriental Outlook said in this week’s online edition residents have been moved off farmland in Chuansha, a part of Shanghai’s Pudong district near the city’s main international airport, to make way for a 6-square-kilometer tract along the city’s airport expressway.

The magazine quoted local economic committee official Qian Weizhong as saying, ‘Once we have central government approval and a concrete plan and Shanghai Disneyland can begin construction right away.’

The park would be built after 2010.

But will it make money? Probably not at the prices Disney likes to charge. Hong Kong Disneyland charges between US$37-$45 a ticket. So the people instead go to Ocean Park which is enjoying the highest attendance in its 30-year history. And you do not have to take the ferry to get there.

It’s about to get worse for HK Disneyland because nearly half of all visitors come from the mainland. Open a Disneyland on the mainland and you have lost a lot of visitors.
Source: The China Post

With the Christmas season arriving five-star hotels are bringing out their winter packages in force.

Le Royal Meriden Shanghai has introduced ’Le Winter Package’ running from Dec 15-Feb 16, 2008:

- Starts from RMB1,300/night in Grand Deluxe room (plus 15%)
- Minimum two-night stay
- RMB400 credit in hotel restaurants
- Late checkout 2pm

It recently hosted French President, Nicholas Sarkozy, during his three-day State visit to China, when he met with Chinese officials and French businessmen at the hotel.
Source: PR Le Royal Meridien Shanghai

For the fourth consecutive year, The Westin Bund Center Shanghai has been voted in Conde Nast Traveler’s ‘Top 100, The Best of The Best Hotels in the World’. So, it is now one of the top 100 globally and one of the top 10 hotels in Asia.

In September this year, it unveiled a new Grand Tower with 269 plush rooms and suites which cost RMB100 million to refurbish from the former serviced apartment building. The hotel now has a total of 570 rooms.

It opened in 2002 and was Westin’s first property in China. There is also The Westin Beijing, Financial Street.

JAL Hotels has announced that the company has signed a hotel management agreement on with Shanghai Yuchang Real Estate Development to open a five-star Hotel Nikko Shanghai in March, 2009.

The new hotel will be located at the corner of Shanghai Puxi area’s main road, Yan An West Road and Zhen Ning Road.

The hotel will be a part of Manpo International Plaza, a newly developed commercial real estate complex. It will be a five-star hotel with 388 guest rooms in a 23-story building above ground and two stories in the basement, which will occupy a total of 47,724 square meters.

In addition to Hotel Nikko Shanghai, two luxury condominium buildings and a luxury office building will be built in the Manpo International Plaza. It is only a 25-minute-drive from Shanghai Hongqiao Airport.

Japan Airlines opened a round-trip, twice-daily air route including code sharing with China Eastern Airlines between Shanghai Hongqiao and Haneda Tokyo Airport in September 2007. Thus this is a great fit for JAL Hotels.

The company already has the Nikko Hotel, Dalian, shown in our illustration. Further, this year, the company opened the 373-room Hotel Nikko Tianjin in Tianjin. Future openings include the 500-room Hotel Nikko Wuxi in 2009.