Drawn by the Great Wall and the Terra-Cotta Soldiers in Xian, overseas tourists are flooding into the country. And despite the current unrest in Tibet, the draw of the mainland is unlikely to weaken any time soon. Last year’s 132 million visitors spent $42 billion, making China the fourth most popular destination country, behind France, Spain, and the U.S.

By 2015, the World Tourism Organization estimates, it will be No. 1.

Perhaps, even more important is domestic tourism, which makes up three-fourths of total revenues. Propelled by double-digit gross domestic product growth and rising urban incomes — up more than 12% last year — increasingly well-off Chinese are opting to travel within China for fun and relaxation.

Good news for Wyndham Worldwide’s Super 8 franchise (Wyndham also has Howard Johnson and Days Inn properties on the mainland). Since opening its first hotel in Beijing in 2004, the chain has grown to 67 properties in cities across the mainland. By year end, Super 8 plans to double its locations in China.

Mitchell Presnick, Super 8 China’s chief executive, said, ‘When economies experience this kind of growth, one of the first things that happens is people want to travel.’

Treu. But this is not all good news. The writer was in Paris in January and it was bitterly cold. And there were long lines to get into everything. In the end, one gave up in disgust. If that was January what will September be like?
Source: BusinessWeek

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

With the Olympic Games scheduled to hit Beijing next year, major hotel companies have scrambled to get new properties in China open in time.

Hilton Hotels operates six hotels in China (the one in Beijing is shown here), but will more than double that in the next few years. In late August it announced an agreement to manage a new Hilton in the Wangfujing district of Beijing, set to open next year, and also has scheduled to open in 2008 a Doubletree in Beijing, a Conrad in Shanghai and a Doubletree in Kunshan, as well as a resort and spa in Chongqing. Three other Hiltons are set to open in China by 2011. In June, a joint venture of one of Deutsche Bank’s investment arms and private equity firm H&Q Asia Pacific agreed to create and manage more than 25 hotels in mainland China under Hilton’s mid-price Hilton Garden Inn brand.
InterContinental Hotels now has 67 hotels open. IHG plans to nearly double that by next year, and future growth is particularly focused on Crowne Plaza.
Marriott International now has 27 properties in China, according to company spokesman John Wolf, and by 2010 will have 15 more: six under the Marriott brand, three under the Renaissance brand, two under the JW Marriott brand and four under Marriott’s mid-price Courtyard brand. In addition, the company will open six of its luxury Ritz-Carlton properties in China by 2010.
Hyatt Hotels & Resorts has announced plans to open in China 15 new properties — three Park Hyatt hotels, three Grand Hyatt hotels and nine Hyatt Regency hotels. China already has more Hyatt properties than any other country outside of North America.
Wyndham Hotel Group has announced an Asia-focused investment management firm is investing $50 million in the master franchisor of the Super 8 brand in China, Tian Rui Hotel Corp. The franchisor already has opened 49 Super 8 properties in China and has agreements in place to develop 67 more.

Even with all those growth plans in place, however, travel managers said the region would continue to be a challenge as travel to the region increases. Travel managers often have to look outside of hotel offerings when planning Asia/Pacific travel.
Source: Business Travel News Online

Standard & Poor’s Equity Research has identified the international hotel groups that it expects will take home from the China Olympics the gold medals for the amount of guests who stay and, as an extension the profits that will be made. With less than 500 days to go the excitement is beginning to mount.

Start with a base figure which is that Beijing is expected to receive about 500,000 to 550,000 overseas visitors as it hosts the summer Olympics.

S&P’s Pearl Wang, writing in US Business Week, says China has the largest development pipeline for hotels in the world after the United States. Lodging Econometrics states that China’s room count is 63% of all the rooms in the Asian pipeline.

Pearl Wang notes:

‘Today in China there are about 5,000 hotels with star ratings, holding about 701,700 available rooms. In comparison, the U.S. has about 50,000 hotels. This suggests to S&P that the market in China appears to have a lot of room for growth. How much? It’s hard to say. By way of comparison, the U.S. hotel industry has annual revenues of about $90 billion.’

So who are the ones to follow? S&P believes one good investment opportunity lies with InterContinental.

S&P equity analyst William Mack said ‘InterContinental is among the three largest hotel companies in China. The company is expanding its China brand presence — in terms of number of rooms — by about 20% a year,’ The company has more than 55 hotels in China, most of which are managed or franchised. InterContinental plans to have about 125 hotels by 2008; many will be Holiday Inns.

Other winners identified by S&P are Hilton Hotels, Marriott International, and Starwood Hotels & Resorts. Other U.S industry players making strides in China are Best Western, which will have around 25 hotels by the end of this year, and Wyndham.
Source: Travel Mole

Wyndham Hotel will launch the Wyndham brand in China during the fourth quarter of this year with the opening of a newly constructed, 550-room, 26-floor luxury hotel Xiamen, Fujian Province.

The Wyndham Xiamen hotel, now under construction by the He Ping Li Hotel Company in the center of Xiamen, will have three full-service restaurants, a 300-square-meter lounge, fitness room, sauna, pool and 1,500 square meters of meeting space and additional function rooms so ideally suited for conferences.

Yan Wen Liang, principal owner of He Ping Li Hotel Company, recently signed a 10-year agreement with Wyndham Hotel Group to manage the property.
Source: Hotel and Motel Management