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.

Chinese officials say they have the world’s largest domestic tourism market based upon number of travelers. And the World Trade Organization says China will probably become the number one international tourist destination by 2020.

It is interesting that although China’s attractions in China draw tourists from around the world the Chinese themselves constitute the bulk of the visitors in their own country. China’s National Tourist Office recorded more than a billion domestic travelers in 2006. That means the size of the domestic tourism industry in China has nearly doubled in this decade alone.

Chinese tourists are also seeking novel adventures. Some tourists have come to the desert on the outskirts of Dunhuang, an outpost of the ancient Silk Road. They are camel trekking, some 1800 kilometers from Beijing as shown in our illustration.

Tourist operator Zhou Haijun says more people want to feel the open spaces of nature. ‘Before, people liked comfortable conditions in hotels. Now there are more people who like to get closer to nature, get inside nature. This concept has come from people loving and caring for the environment.’
Source: Voice of America

Business Traveller China magazine’s readers’ poll has called Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts ‘Best Business Hotel Brand in China’ for the third consecutive year.

The poll was conducted between July and October this year among the magazine’s readership of frequent travelers based mainly in China.

Business Traveller China is the China edition of Business Traveller magazine which has ten editions around the world.

There is a temptation to dismiss these polls because there are, first, so many of them and, second, the subscriber list is, by definition, restricted.

In fact, they serve an useful purpose. If anyone is willing to vote for any hotel as being suited for business travelers then it probably has a fair amount going for it. The magazine, which is published by a company called Panacea (it also does a medical journal), is based in London but has editions pretty much all over the world and is quite authoritative.

The ‘Golden week’ holidays should be changed. In fact, many were under the misunderstanding that a decision had been made to scrap ‘Golden week’ holidays. It would not be an unpopular decision.

According to a survey released by Ctrip and published in the Beijing News half of Chinese travelers want to abolish all ‘Golden week’ holidays, except Spring Festival.

Most wanted to retain the seven-day Spring Festival holiday when Chinese celebrate the lunar new year and which is a very important occasion of family reunion.

Ctrip is the largest consolidator of hotel accommodation and airline tickets for China’s individual travelers.

About 14% of the respondents supported scrapping all three ‘golden week’ holidays and 49.4% wanted to scrap or change the May Day and National Day ‘golden weeks’ and retain the Spring Festival holiday.
If the government scrapped one or more week-long holidays, 60.1% favored compulsory paid vacation in their place to allow every worker to arrange their own holidays.
53.3% of respondents believed the biggest advantage of the ‘golden weeks’ was ‘the right to rest and take a paid vacation’.

Paid vacation has been implemented in some joint ventures in big cities, like Beijing and Shanghai, by which workers arrange their holidays in accordance with the employer’s situation.
Source: China Daily

For outbound travel from China tackling unethical business practices is a top priority. This is true for the China National Tourism Administration (CNTA), as well as for anyone who wants to effectively compete for the emerging China mega-market.

CNTA has set up a web page for consumers to register their complaints.

Nearly 900 complaints about outbound tours were logged in 2006 (78% more than 2005), and from January-June this year, Chinese travelers had logged 466 complaints.

Complaints were about shopping tours, quality standards, hidden costs, accommodation standards, shortcuts in tour programs, and surcharges for younger or older tour members.

Kate Chang of PATA said, ‘Given the growth in the number of outbound trips taken by Chinese travellers the number of complaints seems very small. However, according to Chinese culture, people do not like to complain unless it is a big deal to them.’

For destinations competing for Chinese travelers, reputation based on honesty, quality and value will be a critical factor for success. There is a very full report which you can get by clicking on Travel Daily News.
Source: Travel Daily News

A pointer to how large outbound China travel is becoming is provided by a credit card. China Union Pay, China’s own credit card, set up in 2002, is one of the fastest growing credits cards brands across the world, without any marketing campaigns about its buying power.

One reason for its massive increase is that the 34 million Chinese that traveled overseas last year all acted as unofficial brand ambassadors. In Australia, National Australia Bank has teamed with China Union Pay so that Chinese tourists can make EFTPOS purchases and ATM withdrawals with their credit and debit cards. Banks in the United States, Germany and Egypt are among the others following suit.

The travel industry worldwide sees China as the single most important development in world tourism. The Economist Intelligence Unit estimates there will be 60 million tourists from mainland China by 2010 and 100 million by 2015. On the other hand the WTO believes the 100 million figure will be reached later, in 2020. Either way it is an immense change in world tourism.

Last year, 15 countries and regions opened their doors to Chinese tourists. To date, Chinese travelers can visit 132 destinations. Among the newest to be approved are Oman, Morocco and Syria.

In a sense, everyone is trying to get into the act. Now Turkey is trying to attract tourists from China. Turkey only receives between 40,000 and 50,000 of the 132 million Chinese traveling the world each year. Even if two per cent of them went to Turkey each year they would represent half the tourist trade.

The United Arabs Emirate and China are close to signing the Approved Destination Status agreement. Under ADS, Chinese nationals will be able to obtain a single-entry visa to the UAE.

Once in full effect, it will significantly increase the opportunity, for example, for Dubai to push it’s attractiveness for tourism and MICE (meetings, incentives, conventions and exhibitions) markets. This, of course, could be a two way traffic.

Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Al Saud’s Kingdom Hotel Investments earlier this year bought the Swissotel Kunshan for $58 million. This 387 rooms is new in that it only began operating two years ago. Now Kingdom Holdings has reportedly earmarked $1 billion for investment in China’s booming hotel industry.
Source: TTN

How important is tourism? Note the Olympic Games have not started nor yet Expo 2010. Both will pull in the punters by the many million. But even without out those China’s tourism industry is doing pretty well.

According to statistics from the China National Tourism Administration (CNTA) it generated $17.94 billion in foreign currencies in the first half of this year which is up 13.1% from a year earlier.

CNTA data showed that 91.74% of the total tourism forex revenue was generated by tourists who spent at least one night in China.

More than 12.12 million foreigners came to the Chinese mainland for sightseeing, up 18.47% from a year earlier. The growth rate more than tripled the 6.1% increase for all inbound tourists to the Chinese mainland, which came to 63.37 million.
Source: China Daily

Experts in China say that with the Olympics as a launch pad and amid a rising global fascination in all things Chinese, China is expected to replace France as the world’s top tourism destination by 2014.

Perhaps. Possibly. Maybe.

That is a long time to forecast major shifts in travel and just extrapolating the current figures is not the way to do it.

According to the China National Tourism Administration the number of foreign visitors to China went from 300,000 in 1978 to 22 million in 2006, excluding arrivals from Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan.

If all those tourists go home with stories of low prices, good food, excellent service, superb scenery and sights than those figures will continue to increase. But as so many countries have found out, as the mass of tourists increases so the prices rise, the quality of the food and service goes down, the scenery is full of other tourists. Thus the special attraction of a destination quickly abates and the destination quickly loses its glamor.

Administration vice-president Wang Zhifa told a travel industry forum in Beijing recently, ‘China is now an attractive destination for tourists the world over.’

True. That is now. But what if in the next five years hotel prices climb and the rest of the infrastructure finds it cannot cope with the increase in numbers?

Xu Jing, the organization’s Asia-Pacific representative, said that China was on course to overtake the United States, the world’s number three tourist destination, this year in terms of foreign visitor arrivals. The Asian giant would then pass Spain, number two, by the end of the decade. With an expected boost from next year’s Beijing Olympics, and another shot in the arm supplied by the 2010 Shanghai World Expo. Xu Jing said China will overtake France by 2014.

A lot will depend on the reports tourists bring back from the Olympics. Half a million negative reports and those figures that Xu Jing quotes will never be reached.

This year alone China’s tourism industry is expected to generate $78 billion, 2.5% of GDP, a figure that could rise to $277 billion by 2017, according to the World Tourism Organization.

In Beijing, China’s top tourist draw, according to official figures revenue from the industry is growing at about 7% a year, accounting for around 8% of the city’s gross domestic product.

he broader impact of the thriving sector on the rest of the economy is huge, accounting for $440 billion dollars this year and estimated to reach up to $1.6 trillion by 2017.

It is always difficult forecasting. There is at least a possibility that those figures will not be reached as tourism becomes bogged down by the large numbers. At a guess — and this is a guess, not forecasting — the infrastructure is not yet in place to deal with such large figures. The language problem alone is enough but add to it internal transportation problems and the relative paucity of mid-priced resorts and the conclusion is that much needs to be done before China can easily attain this proclaimed potential.
Source: China Daily

The World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) published ‘2007 China travel and tourism economic research.’ This shows that in 2007, China’s personal travel expenses are expected to reach approximately RMB900 billion. By 2017 it estimates China’s personal travel expenses will reach RMB3.5 trillion. This, of course, is a guesstimate but it does show the size of the potential market, potential profits and potential problems.

Last year, the number of overseas tourists in China amounted to approximately 50 million. The number of tourists traveling abroad reached about 35 million and the number of domestic tourists was about 1.4 billion.

China has become a traveling destination and at some point in the future, probably within ten years, it will be the world’s most popular tourist destination.
Source: People’s Daily Online

According to the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Statistics China’s inbound tourism industry is growing much faster than expected in some areas. The results of a recent study indicate that over the first five months of 2007, Beijing received over 1.6 million international tourists, up 11.8% on the same period last year. Which is why all of those hotels keep opening.

The bureau said the main source markets for international tourists into Beijing were Japan, the US and South Korea.

Meanwhile, statistics show Tibet received a record 672,000 domestic tourists and 45,000 international tourists over the first five months of the year – an 82% increase on 2006 figures. According to the regional tourism bureau, tourists contributed RMB636 million ($83.5 million) to the economy over this period, up 78%.
Source: TTG