Last year, Chinese travelers ventured abroad more than 100 million times, according to estimates from the European Travel Commission, not only helping China surpass the US as the world’s leading source of tourism, but also affirming that China is a leading force in business travel, as well.
And that figure is expected to grow significantly over the next decade. Though the great preponderance of trips are visits — some as short as a day — to Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau, the Chinese are also traveling far more internationally, as well as within their own borders: both for pleasure and for business.
The surging numbers have left international hotel chains scrambling to lure Chinese recreational and business travelers. Chains are expanding in and outside China with a view to building brand loyalty.
Illustration: Yusha
Business travelers are an appealing target because there are relatively few globally established high-end Chinese hotel chains, like Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts, which is based in Hong Kong and has been adding properties in China and abroad.
“For a lot of the young Chinese business travelers, work-based travel is the first trip they take,” said Lisa Holladay, vice president for global brand marketing at Ritz-Carlton. “That experience is very formative, and it helps shape their brand loyalty: that feeling that ‘This is the brand for me.’”
“We have also found that the young Chinese business traveler wants to blend work and leisure,” she added. “They think: ‘My company is sending me to Paris, and I will stay for a weekend.’ We coined the term ‘bleisure’ for that.”
A report last year on Chinese international travel by Hotels.com concluded that 22 percent of the time, Chinese travelers combined vacation with work — up two percentage points from 2013. It found that 36 percent of business travelers were under 35 years old, compared with 30 percent of leisure travelers, and they were more inclined to book top-end accommodations — like four- or five-star hotels — than other travel groups.
“The Chinese are about knowing luxury,” Holladay said. “There is a lot of focus on business and getting ahead, so that if they stay at the right hotel, they see it as a sign of sophistication that will help shape their career. They want to pick the luxury brand, and they are looking for the authentic experience.”
Denny Huang, a 52-year-old textile company head in Wuxi, China, said that when he travels within China, he may stay at a local chain like Seven Days Inn, a domestic competitor of the international chains, but when he travels to the US to meet with customers, he chooses Sheraton or Intercontinental because the hotel’s image is important in such situations.
Similarly, James Lee of Hong Kong, a 51-year-old director of Ascent Corp Clothing Company, says that when he travels within China, he may use local hotels because the prices are more competitive and there is no language issue, but outside the country, he may choose a brand like Hilton or Marriott because the chains represent a known standard.
Traveling outside China has become easier as countries eager to welcome the high-spending Chinese have relaxed visa rules. Visas that were once limited to one year have been extended to 10 years in the US, five years in South Korea and three years in Australia.
One sign of global chains’ focus on the Asian market was a decision by Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts last year to bring in Michael Crawford to a new post, president for Asia-Pacific. He was previously senior vice president and general manager of the ShanghaiDisney Resort. The hotel chain already has eight properties in China, four of which have opened since 2012, and a new hotel in Tianjin is planned for next year.
Like other hotel brands, Four Seasons is tailoring its services, promotional efforts and technology to the Chinese visitor. A Web site about its hotels in China can be read either in English or Chinese, and it offers an app for its hotels in Chinese.
China has more than 632 million Internet users, more than 80 percent of whom have access to the web via a mobile device, according to the China Internet Network Information Center.
“More and more of their first engagement is through a mobile app,” Crawford said. “They are leapfrogging technology to go right to mobile applications.”
Conrad Hotels & Resorts, which has eight hotels in China, offers a concierge mobile app with a translation feature that allows a Chinese-speaking client going to London, for example, to order room service in Chinese and have the order received in English by the hotel.
John Vanderslice, global head of luxury and lifestyle brands at Hilton Worldwide, parent of the Conrad, Waldorf Astoria and Hilton brands, said new Conrad and Waldorf Astoria hotels would be planned to accommodate the Chinese preference for holding business meetings in private dining rooms.
Chinese breakfasts — dumplings, congee and noodle dishes — are increasingly part of the menu at Waldorf and Conrad hotels, as well as Hiltons that attract a lot of Chinese visitors.
Hoteliers are also hoping that the loyalty programs that have proved so popular around the world will appeal to the Chinese traveler. The Starwood Preferred Guest program “has already grown 108 percent in less than two years” in China, said Anthony Ingham, head of brand management in North America for Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide, which oversees St Regis, the Luxury Collection and W hotels.
The company has also noted the rise of the mobile Web.
“We launched the SPG app that you can download, and you can use it to open your door, among other things,” Ingham said. “It has had a faster takeup in China than anywhere else, and we have had one million downloads in China since 2012.”
If that continues, it can only signal that the competition for Chinese guests will surge as significantly as the number of Chinese travelers.
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