More Chinese tourists are expected to travel to overseas destinations such as Hong Kong with the appreciation of the RMB against the US dollar. For Chinese travelers, it means stronger purchasing power in the United States and other countries and regions that use US dollars or peg their currencies to it.

Since Chinese tour groups are still unable to organize trips to the US, it is destinations such as Hong Kong, with its currency pegged to the US dollar, that attract tourists from the Chinese mainland.

Guo Guang, manager with ctrip.com, an online travel service, said, ‘More people have called to inquire about our Hong Kong tour packages than usual.’

So far, the number of customers who purchased Hong Kong tour products from ctrip.com has increased by 70% year-on-year.

But outbound travel is not being seriously driven by the rise and rise of the renminbi. Dun Jidong, marketing director of the China Travel Service’s overseas tourism department, said, ‘The current yuan appreciation can only serve as an auxiliary factor to the booming outbound tourism market. If it is to prompt much more people to travel overseas, the appreciation has to be so significant that it leads to a huge drop in the price of outbound tour products.’
Source: China Daily

Kempinski Hotel Xi’an is set to open this May. It calls itself a ‘business hotel’ so it will have extensive MICE facilities including a 1,600 square meter ballroom. It is aiming to cater for the 450 plus trade fairs that are held in Xi’an every year and it is the offical venue for the bi-annual Euro-Asia Economic Forum.

It will have 355 guestrooms and for those who can’t resist a tune, a 3,000 square meter Kareoke entertainment area. The hotel is located right where the Chan and Ba Rivers cross each other in the Chanba Ecological District, northeast of Xi’an city.

The hotel just had a site inspection by four officials shown in the photo. From the left: hotel GM Yoland Perras, Wang Jun who is CEO of Chanba District Development, Bai Huqun from the Illness Controls Bureau, government official Wang Chengwen and Lily Cao, GM of Xi’an Neo China Chanba Euro Asia Hotel Development Co.
Source: Kempinski Hotel Xi’an

For a while, getting a Chinese visa was not easy. The people staffing the office, particularly in Australia, went through a rudeness test. Then it became apparent that tourism and business are good thing for an economy and the whole process what transformed into a stress-free delight. (The Sydney office deserves a special mention. The commissionaire there treats you as an honored guest.)

Because of political demonstrations — Tibet and Dafur — Chinese officials have again put the clamp on visa restrictions and this just ahead of the Olympic Games.

The European Union Chamber of Commerce in China cited members’ reports of refused applications for multiple-entry business visas and rush services, and for shortened validity periods on approved visas. Some members were being told to return to their home countries in order to apply for business visa renewals.

Joerg Wuttke, president of the European chamber in China said, ‘This benefits no one. These new practices make the possibility of traveling to China for business uncertain and increase travel costs by limiting the number of entries per visa.

On April 18, the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong sent a sharply worded letter to Beijing’s representative in Hong Kong about what it called ‘clearly a significant change in business and tourism visa policies.’ The letter, written by AmCham President Richard Vuylsteke and addressed to Foreign Ministry commissioner Lu Xinhua, included a summary of replies from a snap survey the chamber conducted among its members, detailing the headaches business travelers are facing.

Richard Vuylsetke wrote, ‘These recent changes and, even more so, the way in which they have been implemented is a significant step backwards.’
Source: Wall Street Journal

InterContinental Hotels plans to double its number of hotels in China to more than 200 by the end of 2010. Take it as an average for the moment that each hotel takes 200 staff on average. Then HC has to be able to find 40,000 in something of a hurry.

InterContinental, which manages 84 hotels in China under four brands, will drive expansion mainly through its mid-range Holiday Inn and Holiday Inn Express brands which target China’s growing ranks of middle-class travellers,

Asia Pacific Chief Executive Peter Gowers (seen here) said, ”The future in China is about the mass market,’ And he is not aiming low. He said there will eventually be more than 500 Holiday Inn and Holiday Inn Express hotels in China.

InterContinental already has 51 hotels in Greater China under those two brands but you have to compare that with almost 3,000 in the United States.

The three main contestants in this area are InterContinental, France’s Accor and Wyndham Worldwide and they are all stepping up expansion in China which suggests the struggle for qualified staff will be horrendous.

China is InterContinental’s fastest-growing market and the focus of the company’s expansion in the Asia Pacific region and accounts for about 15 to 20% of global profit.

Gower expects Asia Pacific to catch up with rest of the world in the next five years although the United States will remain InterContinental’s biggest market for at least 10 years.

InterContinental, which also manages Crowne Plaza and its namesake brand in China, plans to introduce the less expensive Indigo brand to China and is looking for properties and partners in Shanghai and Beijing.

Now we come to the problems.

Peter Gowers said, ‘It’s very easy to add new hotels in China. You simply get your name, and you screw it on the door of a hotel. But we’re very careful about growth. We’re building a business in China to last 50 or 60 years, but not building just to get headlines for one year.’

And you need all those people to stand behind the name screwed on the door and make quite certain the customer is served to a certain standard.

For hotels, these are interesting times.
Source: The Guardian

The Grand Millennium Hotel, part of the Fortune plaza Complex, Beijing, (seen here) has opened in the center of the city’s financial and business district.

The hotel is owned and managed by Millennium & Copthorne International.

Mr Kwek Leng Beng, chairman of M&C Hotels, said: ‘Securing the Grand Millennium Beijing anchors our presence in China and is a key development in our stated aim to grow in Asia.’

Mr. Tan Kim Seng, senior vice president of Millenium & Copthorne International, added: ‘The addition of Grand Millennium Beijing to our presence in China, which includes Millennium Wuxi Hotel, Millennium Hongqiao Shanghai and Millennium Hotel Xiamen, will augment our brand awareness in a country with a substantial outbound market that is growing at a vigorous pace.’

The five star hotel has 521 guest rooms and has a business center, an indoor swimming pool, a spa and fitness centre, five restaurants and bars and an Executive Club lounge.

But note confusion can arise because this is not the first Millenium Hotel in Beijing.

There was the Millennium Hotel, Beijing in Guanganmen Nei Street, Xuanwu District. It is now called the Grand Metropark.
Source: eTravelBlackboard

If you work for a big American company and you have to travel you have very few choices. The company makes them for you. It has a deal with yet another company which negotiates lower travel and accommodation costs because of the bulk involved. The individual traveler simply does not have much say. Because the company saves serious amount of money.

At the moment China business has, generally, not got on to this area of cost saving.

Jean-Pierre Remy, president of Expedia Corporate Travel said fewer than one in five companies in China currently uses a travel management company, leaving room for explosive growth.

It is, in fact, a no-brainer.

According to American Express China’s business travel market is worth $10 billion, the world’s fourth-biggest. Online travel agency Expedia Inc’s corporate travel unit expects growth in China’s corporate travel services market to speed up substantially from its current pace of 20 to 30%.

Expedia Corporate Travel, a five-year-old business, is still small time compared to its massive retail parent. It had 1.3 billion bookings globally in 2007, compared with 20 billion bookings for Expedia Inc.

It is moving into China in a joint venture with eLong Inc. the country’s second-largest online travel firm in which Expedia owns a stake. Yes, there is competition already for this immense market but it is barely tapped and Expedia has a major growth opportunity.
Source: Reuters

The architect of the Grand Hyatt Guangzhou, Peter Remedios, calls his latest project, scheduled to open in spring 2008, ‘an architectural tour de force’. Architects do not do bashful well.

Situated in Guangzhou’s new central business district of Tianhe — whose English name is Pearl River New Town — Grand Hyatt Guangzhou is located in one wing of a brand new streamlined twin-tower building.

This is the first international hotel in Guangzhou to feature a ’sky lobby’ located 22 floors up. Like many other areas in the hotel, it offers expansive views across the Pearl River and Tianhe CBD.

The hotel has 375 guestrooms each with a bathroom island – incorporating a separate soaking tub and rain shower.

Peter Remedios said, ‘It can be open and as sexy as you want, or closed off for privacy.’ Which could lead to some interesting arguments if you are staying there with your wife.

A specially designed inset wall frame allows a 37-inch multi-channel LCD flat-screen TV to be neatly stored flush with the wall and swung out when required for viewing from certain angles.

For it to be used as a MICE hotel on the third floor, the hotel’s three interconnecting sections of the Grand Ballroom can be augmented by fully enclosed VIP and bridal rooms. There are also six function rooms and a Business Centre on the same level.

Hyatt currently operates 10 hotels in Greater China, including Grand Hyatt Beijing, Grand Hyatt Hong Kong, Grand Hyatt Shanghai, Hyatt on the Bund, Shanghai, Grand Hyatt Taipei, Hyatt Regency Dongguan, Hyatt Regency Hangzhou, Hyatt Regency Jing Jin City Resort and Spa, Hyatt Regency Tianjin and Hyatt Regency Xian. An additional 12 hotels are under development.
Source: China NewsWire

The Tibet regional government rejected reports it has abandoned a plan to reopen the region to foreign tourists on May 1, saying it ‘will open soon’, without giving a specific date.The information office of the regional government said: ‘The Tibet tourism bureau is doing its utmost to prepare for the reopening of all scenic spots.’

It has been suggested the region will reopen to foreign and domestic tourists on May 1, a national holiday. A newspaper in Zhengzhou, Henan province, reported that train tickets to Lhasa have already sold out.

Authorities in Diqing Tibetan autonomous prefecture, Yunnan province, said last week the region had now reopened to foreign travelers.
Source: China Daily

As mentioned in a previous post on March 20, Swissôtel Grand, Shanghai will open to the public later this month. It is offering a special rate on its ‘Classic Rooms’. If you book between May and August 2008, a one-night stay is RMB 1,295 (about US$178) inc. breakfast + tax and service charge.

Other deals include 20% discounts on food, bevs and spa treatments for members of the “Miles and More” program of Lufthansa and Swiss International Air Lines. And there are also benefits for those who belong to Asia Miles, Air China, Jet Airways and JAL. 
Source: Swissôtel Grand, Shanghai

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