Peace Hotel

Shanghai’s iconic Peace Hotel, once known as the most luxurious destination in the Far East, is to host what is called a contemporary arts center but which sounds more like a high class watch shop.

The centre in the hotel’s south building — in fact it is suggested it will be taking over the Peace Hotel South Building — will open to the public before the start of Shanghai’s World Expo in May 2010.

Swiss watch makers Swatch Group will own a 90% stake. It will be interesting to see whether contemporary arts and a display of Swatch watches work together or whether the center brecomes a Swatch shop with pictures.

Swatch watches

The press release states: ‘The Swatch Art Peace Hotel will welcome the arts and working artists from around the world to its splendid venues, becoming once again a focal point of Shanghai’s vibrant cultural life. . . ‘

‘The Swatch Group’s close association with contemporary art and artists will be highlighted and complemented by a Swatch Art boutique and by the presence of numerous works of art on site, the statement said. Dedicated boutiques on the ground floor will host the Swatch Group’s most prestigious brands, including Breguet, Blancpain, and Omega. Each of the brand boutiques will be designed to complement and enhance the period decor and cultural ambience of the hotel.’ PR releases are written like that.

Sadly, it sounds like a lot of high quality watch shops taking over the Peace Hotel South Building. This is a joint-venture acquisition with the leading Chinese Jin Jiang Group, a hotel and tour operator, which holds a 10% share in the venture.
Sources: AFP and JCKonline.com

An unrealistic picture of Yangshuo but so beautiful, so charming, so China

Yangshuo county in Guangxi, China is attracting an increasing number of tourists. While it has traditionally been overshadowed by attractions such as the scenic Guilin city, Yangshuo attracted over five million visitors last year.

This new tourism destination brought in about S$260 million in 2007, up 45% from 2006.

A show, which has been choreographed by director Zhang Yimou, and which is performed ‘live’ everyday, has been drawing the crowds to Yangshuo.

Steven Yin, rooms director, Yangshuo Tangrenjie Hotel, explained: ‘At night, after they watch the show, many will choose to stay overnight in Yangshuo. So that has helped to boost the hotel industry.

‘Previously, the tourists will just sail along the Li River and shop on West Street before returning to Guilin.’

There are over 380 hotels in Yangshuo to cater to the growing number of local and foreign tourists.
Source: Channel NewsAsia

From a tandoor oven

The next Marriott which will open in Beijing around January, will have a fine-dining Indian restaurant serving Lucknow and Awadh cuisine made by a team of expat chefs. Tarun Varma, Director of event management at the Beijing Marriott City Wall , said, ‘It will be the first luxury hotel in China with a fine-dining restaurant for Indian cuisine.’

Seems a big claim to make.

Indian menus in China are still basic and forced to innovate with limited ingredients, like samosa folded in shortcrust pastry.

True tandoori dish

At a recent Hyderabad-themed party at the India Tourism office in Beijing, the restaurant catering for the event had to send their Garhwali chef to a senior official’s house, where his wife demonstrated how to cook Hyderabadi biryani and mirch ka salan.

Tarun Varma,  said, ‘Getting approval for a tandoor takes time in China, because there are detailed rules about burning open coal. We don’t want to use an electric oven like some restaurants prefer to.’
Source: Trading Markets

Millbrook in New Zealand: amazing and empty

Spending by domestic travelers in New Zealand fell by $507 million or 6.4% to $7.39 billion in the year to June 2008, new research from the New Zealand Ministry of Tourism shows.

The biggest overseas loss came from China. Visitors from there dropped by a third, falling by 2,700 to 5,497 in September.

Ministry research manager Bruce Bassett said, ‘Weaker economic conditions and high fuel costs during the period are being reflected in a reduction in demand for travel, including domestic travel.’

The number of overnight trips fell by 5.5% from the previous year to 14.4 million trips, while the number of day trips dropped 15.5% to 25.9 million.

If the price of fuel stayed down in coming months, Bassett expected to see an increase in domestic activity, particularly in the number of day trips.

This research comes the same week that Statistics NZ unveiled a big drop in the number of international visitors last month.

It said tourist numbers fell 6.6 %, or 11,100 people, in September compared with the same month last year — the equivalent of 25 jumbo jets full of passengers.
Source: New Zealand Herald

Crowds at Golden Week

Retails sales and the number of tourists throughout the Golden Week holiday broke records in China’s tourism industry.

This year’s National Day holiday, which marks the 1949 founding of the People’s Republic of China, ran from September 29 through October 5.

Figures released by the National Tourism Administration (NTA) showed the country’s 119 major tourist destinations received more than 18.29 million visitors. That’s an increase of 13.2% from a year earlier. The NTA also said ticket sales rose by 16.4% from last year which means there has been some easing upwards of prices.

The country’s retail sales during the Golden Week exceeded RM420 billion (about $61.3 billion), jumping 21% from the same holiday last year.
More HERE.
Source: Window of China

Map of Fujian

Nearly 300 tourists from the Mainland become the first to visit Taiwan via Kinmen on Fujian Island.

Some 282 Mainland tourists from Fujian province — including 134 tourists from five groups from Xiamen, 96 tourists from three groups from Quanzhou and 52 tourists from two groups from Fuzhou — became the first groups to take advantage of the government’s announcement in early September that people from the Mainland could visit Taiwan via the ‘mini link’ route.

The ‘mini links’ refer to direct sea transportation links between Kinmen and Matsu and several ports in Fujian province that are around 40 kilometers away.

Some 230 travelers took ferries from Xiamen and Quanzhou to Kinmen’s Shuitou wharf, and were scheduled to continue on to Taiwan on separate domestic flights later yesterday and today.
Source: Taiwan News

Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum.

A popular tourist attraction in the city of Nanjing in Jiangsu province is fueling controversy for its entrance fees.

The management of the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum, which contains the tomb of the father of the Republic of China revered by many Chinese at home and abroad, has reportedly been facing criticism for not opening its site for free to the public.

The scenic spot has an admission fee of RMB80 ($11.60 U.S. dollars), which is higher than the entrance fee for the Forbidden City in Beijing.

Ta Kung Pao, a Hong Kong newspaper quoted an official as saying the authorities will open the spot to the public for free next year.

In line with a regulation released earlier this year, museums, memorial halls and spots used for patriotic education began to open free of charge and received national allowances for rising operational costs.

Negotiations with the mausoleum’s management on the issue reportedly fell apart because the site required an allowance of RMB300 million every year, 10 times that proposed by the government.

Responding to the ongoing criticism, a publicity official of the mausoleum said yesterday that it is ‘impossible’ for the attraction to be free.
Source: Jongo News

Macau at night

The Macau Government Tourist Office has appointed travel PR specialist Hume Whitehead to promote the territory, a special administrative region of China, as a business and tourist destination.

This will not be an easy task.

The region is already best known for its casinos, but Hume Whitehead will be selling Macau as a multi-faceted destination by emphasizing its entertainment facilities and its standing as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is also aiming to publicize Macau as an ideal location for business events and conventions.

UK travellers already make up most of Macau’s European visitors, but its  tourism chiefs are keen to attract higher numbers of British tourists.
Source: Brand Republic

Mao Chi-kuo

In Taiwan the Minister of Transportation and Communications has said he hopes the number of tourists coming to Taiwan from the mainland will increase through more direct flights and flight routes across the Taiwan Strait.

Mao declined to elaborate on how many more tourists he hopes to see, but he was quoted as saying in a recent radio interview that the hopes the number will increase to 1,000 per day.

Taiwan has a cap of 3,000 tourist arrivals from the mainland per day, but the actual arriving numbers have fallen far short of expectations.

Mao Chi-kuo noted that the mainland and Taiwan will conduct a second round of talks next month and expressed hope that the number of weekend flights can be increased from the current 18, along with an increase in flight destinations and routes.
Source: Yahoo News

Zen Shaolin show

‘Zen Shaolin,’ is an outdoor spectacle and tourist attraction in Henan Province, China. The extravaganza, with a cast of 500, is staged after nightfall in a valley that sits before a huge mountain in central Henan Province, one of the cradles of Chinese civilization.

For those who were dazzled by the opening of the Beijing Olympics earlier this month, that ceremony had its roots in shows like this one, which with government backing and private financing are drawing huge audiences to some of China’s most scenic or historic spots.

The outdoor performances are part cultural event, part tourist attraction, with a dash of Hollywood and an intriguing blend of high and pop culture.

In the new China, investors and the government can team up to acquire a mountain, hire the Academy Award-winning composer Tan Dun and the internationally known dancer and choreographer Huang Dou Dou, and produce a spectacle that includes monks from the famed Shaolin Temple.

The project’s investors spent more than $15 million to build a theater set in a valley below three mountains, one rising 4,921 feet, with temples, a wooden pagoda, a martial-arts school, an arched bridge, a stream and a small village with a stone pathway.

One of the hopes of the producers was that “Zen Shaolin,” which opened in May 2007, would bolster tourism in a province that has 100 million residents and has largely been left behind by China’s economic boom. Much more HERE.
Source: New York Times