It’s a pretty-crowded jungle, but the jungle is pretty – blooming with new flowers and not the garden-variety types.
I’m referring to our Cover Story this issue on Asia’s new hotel openings, which provide any planner big or small, budget or luxurious, boutique or large, with lots more choices.
Asia is the hotbed of how the global hotel industry will look like down the road, as new products compete on form and function. It is as if the genie has been let out of the bottle, and nowhere is this more evident than in Shanghai, where I am writing this, and where, at every corner I turn to, there is something new for everyone.
You prefer something edgy? The Waterhouse at the South Bund, fits the bill. The just-opened 19-room hotel is a conversion of a nondescript riverside building and next to it is a 743m2 event warehouse that has already hosted a Shanghai Tang fashion show and Hong Kong film director Wong Kar Wai’s star-studded private party.
Something larger in a fashionable district perhaps? The Langham Xintiandi may be it. It is opening this autumn with 357 rooms and almost 2,000m2 of available conference and banquet space. The building’s architecture alone is an eye-popper.
It is no longer just about opening a hotel in a key location and expanding a hotel brand presence and distribution in the fastest-growing Asia-Pacific hotel market. The new clientele from emerging markets such as China, India, Russia and Brazil, and a new breed of intra-Asian travellers, who are younger and more IT-savvy, are redefining the hotel landscape, just as they have redefined the look of the branded retail stores, which could not be larger or more current than in Asia.
Asian hotel developers have never been known to shy away from building the best. Just as they have redefined a Howard Johnson and a Ritz-Carlton in Asia, a younger generation of owners is also crashing the glass ceiling on hotel ideas and service standards.
There is also a move towards higher market segmentation as hoteliers recognise everyone – even a 1,000-pax conference group – is an “individual”. So, for example, it is not enough to separate Sofitel Luxury Hotels from the Accor umbrella; within the Sofitel range itself, there are two sub-brands, Sofitel Legend and Sofitel So, to cater to travellers who prefer the classic and those who prefer the modern respectively.
Asia-Pacific is witnessing one of the most exciting rebirths of the hotel industry, where a convergence of multi-disciplines such as architecture and IT with hospitality makes this era of development more than just a massive addition of hotel rooms and a healthy pipeline in the future.
It’s a Darwin jungle, full of different species – and where natural selection is furiously at play.
Raini Hamdi
Group editor
“Just as they have redefined a Howard Johnson and a Ritz-Carlton in Asia, a younger generation of owners is also crashing the glass ceiling on hotel ideas and service standards.”
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