Marriott International Inc, the largest US lodging chain, and other groups including Le Meridien and W Hotels, plan to open their first hotels in Taiwan as they compete to cater to rising numbers of Chinese tourists.
Marriott is working with Taiwanese businessman B. V. Riu (劉文治), owner of Taipei-based luxury hotel Sherwood (西華飯店), on a NT$6.2 billion (US$195 million), 352-room lodging franchise agreement, Sherwood president Victor Chou (周武) said.
Le Meridien and W Hotels, both owned by Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc, also plan to open premises in the city this year.
Visitors from China may surpass those from Japan to become Taiwan’s No. 1 source of arrivals this year. International hotel chains and local developers in Taiwan plan to invest NT$83 billion building 45 hotels and resorts, adding 10,865 rooms, in the next three years, the Tourism Bureau said on its Web site.
“There is plenty of room for Chinese tourism to grow,” Ma Tieying (馬鐵英), a Singapore-based economist at DBS Group Holdings Ltd said by telephone. “Direct flights between China and Taiwan will also boost cross-strait business traffic and these businessmen and corporate clients will also trigger demand for hotel rooms.”
China overtook France last year as the world’s fourth-largest source of travel expenditure, according to the UN’s World Tourism Organization. Germany was the biggest, followed by the US and the UK. About 54 million Chinese may travel abroad this year, the China National Tourism Administration forecast.
Travelers from China — excluding Hong Kong and Macau — increased their spending 21 percent to US$43.7 billion last year as worldwide tourism expenditure fell 9.6 percent to US$852 billion, the UN agency said.
“We are going to build a comprehensive complex for leisure, convention and exhibitions,” Chou said in an interview from Taipei last week. “We want to be there for the cross-strait travel boom.”
The developer will break ground on the hotel on Sept. 9, Chou said.
Le Meridien is working with Shin Kong Financial Holding Co’s (新光金融) life insurance arm on its Taipei property, said Christina Yeh (葉樹菁), section chief at the Tourism Bureau’s hotel division. The 160-room hotel, located near the Taipei 101, is scheduled to start operating on Nov. 1, according to Starwood’s Web site.
W Hotels is working with Uni-President Group (統一集團), which operates 7-Eleven and Starbucks stores in Taiwan. The hotel will have 403 rooms and is expected to open in December, Yeh said.
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