The 21st Century Hotel Industry Summit and the ninth Golden-Pillow Award of China Hotels were held in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province last month to honor achievements and discuss trends in the industry. The forum was held as international hoteliers increasingly arrive in China to compete with domestic operations, posing a challenge to local operations in attracting and retaining guests.
China is one of the biggest countries of self made millionaires and billionaires and it has managed a strong position on financial map of the world. The number of millionaire and billionaire has increased considerably and that has a positive impact on the luxury travel industry of China. Many of the rich people are taking trips around the world with better facilities. The demand for business class travel and costly destination with shopping opportunities has increased among the affluent class and at the same time they are demanding to stay in well known hotels with all sorts of modern facilities no matter what they cost.
Cornell University School of Hotel Administration, in association with The Center for Hospitality Research, has organised a day long Cornell International Hospitality Summit for the first time in India at the Taj Mahal Palace, Mumbai. The industry leaders shared their ideas, views and knowledge on the role of education in hospitality. Deepak Tiwari presents an overview of the event.
China's growing middle class is buying new cars and heading off on the country's freshly built highways. And those travelers want clean, affordable places to sleep. Two U.S. hotel giants are hoping to fill that need, launching midpriced brands in China for the first time to capture part of the fast-growing domestic travel market.
The cylinder-shaped hotel tower housing the Casino Lisboa was what defined gambling for decades in this 17-square-mile former Portuguese colony parked on the shore of the South China Sea. Lacking amenities, flash and class, it lived in Las Vegas’ shadow. But all that changed over the past decade after Las Vegas got a piece of the action. Steve Wynn built Wynn Macau across the street from Casino Lisboa. MGM Grand Macau moved in just down the block from Wynn.
I mentioned last week that the Prince Hotels group had opened rooms at its Grand Prince Hotel Akasaka to refugees from the tsunami. That got me thinking about the impact that the ongoing crisis and travel advisories is having on the hospitality sector. The news isn’t good. Start with the Prince Hotels group, which even before the crisis was suffering from overcapacity, a legacy of bubble-era expansion. According to the Nikkei newspaper, the group is now reporting that 90 percent of reservations made by foreign visitors at its 44 hotels have been cancelled.
Sports fans are well catered for by a new hotel design which popped up in China this month - shaped like a ping-pong racket. The wacky design, which will reportedly be built in the city of Huainan, in East China's Anhui province, is perfectly modelled on an upside down table tennis racket and is designed to be built in a planned Olympic park.
It all started with a hotel bathroom, says Steven Pan, chairman of Taiwan-based Formosa International Hotels Corp., which paid US$56 million in April to buy the international Regent luxury hotel chain. "The Regent realized that the bathrooms, not the bedrooms, were where guests spent the majority of their time. So they expanded its size to almost one-third the size of the room," says Mr. Pan. This level of understanding customer needs is what's "going to make the next breakthrough in the hotel industry." Regent—acquired from Carlson Hospitality Group of the U.S. and Brussels-based Rezidor Hotel Group—comprises seven hotels from Beijing to Berlin. Formosa previously operated just one hotel, the Grand Formosa Regent in Taipei.
With ITC breathing down his neck, Hotel Leelaventure chairman Krishnan Nair has put in place a plan that he hopes will keep the hospitality empire he founded within the control of his family. Better known as Captain Nair in Mumbai corporate circles, the 89-year-old Leela chief has convinced his sons, Vivek and Dinesh, to reach an understanding that one brother will not sell the shares he controls to an outsider without offering the stock to the other.
The growing Chinese upper class is just beginning to become a major force in luxury markets worldwide, an executive at the Peninsula Hotel chain said Wednesday. "What we're seeing right now is only the tip of the iceberg. It's quite phenomenal," Peter Borer, Chief Operating Officer of The Hongkong and Shanghai Hotels, Ltd., told the Associated Press in an interview.
Some hotels around the world try to lure you in with perks such as free Internet, free continental breakfast or free night stays for repeat customers. One hotel in Japan though, tries to appeal to unique customers by offering something you won’t find in most hotel rooms anywhere. That is a model train.
With the continuous influx of foreign visitors to China, especially to Shanghai, which is hosting the World Expo hoteliers have shrugged off yuan appreciation as nothing more than a remote threat. For Shanghai, the immediate concern of hoteliers is to find beds for the thousands of visitors flooding in from around the country and abroad to visit the Expo. Many hotels, especially those in Pudong district, have been fully booked months in advance.
When antigovernment protests took over parts of Bangkok the past two months, few companies felt it more than Minor International PCL. The Bangkok-based hospitality and retail giant—which has more than 1,000 restaurants and more than two dozen hotels across Asia Pacific—saw several of its plum locations close because of the rallies, which ended amid deadly violence on May 19.
As the Thai government launches a campaign to woo back tourists after recent rioting here, its world-renowned hospitality industry is facing another threat: stiffer competition from neighboring countries working to increase their visitors. Thailand's tourism industry is suffering from the recent two-month-long antigovernment protests, which ended on May 19 with 88 people dead and some of the capital's most popular shopping areas in flames. Hotels across the country are reporting less than 50% occupancy after many tourists changed their holiday plans to avoid the trouble.
Some of the city’s grandest hotels are shut and ringed with coils of glittering razor wire. Foreign visitors have deserted its temples and backpacker haunts. Military roadblocks hem in some of its famous nightspots.
Craig Platt names his 10 biggest gripes with staying in hotels. Despite the impression Fawlty Towers might have given, running a hotel shouldn't be that difficult. Yet many establishments seem to get it wrong when it comes to basic parts of their service. Here are 10 of the most annoying things hotels consistently get wrong.
Starwood currently draws 15 percent of its business from Asia, said CFO Vasant Prabhu at the Reuters Travel and Leisure Summit in New York. "It's not inconceivable that it (business in Asia) grows to 20, 25 percent," he told Reuters. Starwood has 50 hotels in China and plans to open another 50 to 70 properties. In a few years, Prabhu said the region could be its largest market outside the United States.
The second edition of Hotel Investment Forum India (HIFI), which took place at the Renaissance Mumbai Hotel and Convention Centre from January 12-14, 2010, had a special pre-conference session this year. The session highlighted the e-marketing strategies that hotels need to implement and how one can maximise the use of social networking sites for effective marketing purposes. The session was moderated by Sheldon Santwan, Editor, Hospitality Biz and the panelists included Bradley Edman, Area Director of Sales and Marketing, Marriott International; Philippe Garnier, Vice President Sales, Hilton Worldwide; Ashwini Kakkar, Executive Chairman, Mercury Travels; Cyril Ranque, Vice President, Partner Services Group ARAC, Expedia and Himanshu Singh, Managing Director, Travelocity.
Industry chamber FICCI has called for granting infrastructure status to the hotel industry aimed at boosting investments in the sector. "Granting infrastructure status to the hotel industry will encourage re-investments in the hospitality sector," according to a FICCI-Evalueserve study. The hospitality industry has been demanding infrastructure status, besides being exempted from paying tax on foreign exchange earnings and tax holidays for new hotels as it would encourage re-investment of profits into the sector.
Satoshi Miura crawled into his rented room, dropping his bag in the corner. It didn't take long to get settled -- home tonight is a capsule. The rooms are boxes in this capsule hotel about the size of a coffin. But no matter, says 45-year-old Miura. He's only there to sleep before looking for work.