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IHG announced its intentions to launch a hotel brand for the booming Chinese travel market earlier in the year, Reuters reports, in line with moves made by other foreign multinational companies such as Hermes International that launched a Chinese luxury handbag brand, Shang Xia (translated: “topsy turvy”), last September.
“Our first hotel is coming online 2012, 2013,” said Keith Barr, the Shanghai-based IHG’s regional managing director for Greater China, in an interview with Reuters.
First to enter China as an international hotel brand in 1984, IHG expects to have more hotels in China than in the US by 2025 – but that cannot happen just by “translating” the brand into Mandarin, Barr said. “There are thousands of years of history that have shaped their culture, their backgrounds and their beliefs — the way that you should arrive at a hotel and be treated, it’s just different”.
“There is rising demand for something that is truly Chinese – and not the Western view of what is Chinese,” he said. So InterContinental Hotels is launching a new upscale made-for-China hotel, because China’s “emerging affluent class” -which could be twice the size of its US counterpart by 2015 – is not happy with standard Western hotel design. “They want the assurance of an international brand….but they are very proud to be Chinese.”
The new hotel brand, yet to be named, will target business travellers, state-owned enterprises and Chinese government officials. Barr said the company’s intensive research of Chinese consumer preferences would help shape hotel services to make them different than other Western-run hotels.
Some of the differences include a smaller hotel bar and bigger teahouse space to facilitate social gatherings, and a Chinese restaurant that is open for dining all day and will have many more individual private dining rooms. It will also feature a grand lobby to cater to Chinese preferences for luxury.
Barr said IHG would position the new brand in the high-end of the market, similar to Crowne Plaza, and may move the brand overseas. IHG has 145 hotels in China and the firm launched its boutique brand, Hotel Indigo, in Shanghai late last year.
“There are going to be 100 million Chinese tourists travelling abroad in the near future and if we build a brand locally here that really resonates with them, it will be prudent business for us to move that brand outside of China over time,” said Barr.
IHG also sees the new Chinese brand being launched into fast-growing second- and third-tier cities in China where new rail connections and airports are making it easier to reach for domestic tourists.
The group recently decided to change the name of its Holiday Inn Express brand in China – because just translating the name made it appear to be a cheap budget hotel, competing with local rivals like Home Inn and Motel 168, instead of the slightly more premium brand position it occupies in China. The new name translates as “Smart Choice”.
Vicky is the co-founder of TravelDailyNews Media Network where she is the Editor-in Chief. She is also responsible for the daily operation and the financial policy. She holds a Bachelor's degree in Tourism Business Administration from the Technical University of Athens and a Master in Business Administration (MBA) from the University of Wales. She has many years of both academic and industrial experience within the travel industry. She has written/edited numerous articles in various tourism magazines.
