An overview of prevailing trend of Chinese hotel joining hotel chains - Essay Example

With the exposure to the foreign markets most of the single hotels are adopting the trend of joining the chains in order to get the advanced facilities with continuous renovation and updation. "Increasingly the chains are offering a better and better selection of services and products from around the world, which is rapidly exposing the Chinese consumers to products that they would otherwise not have the opportunity to sample." (Tibbits, 2003) "The growth of China's inbound tourism market appears to have matched its economic growth and has consistently outstripped the world wide average.

Between 1990 and 2000, international visitor arrivals to China increased by an average of 11.8% pa, while global tourism grew by a modest 4.3% pa. During 2001, the disparity was magnified. In the face of a global decline of 1.3%, international visitor arrivals to China increased by 6.7% to reach 89.0 million. This growth continued into the first six months of 2002, with international arrivals increasing by 9.4% over the six months to June 2001. The World Tourist Organisation recently announced that China was set to overtake Italy, US, Spain and France and become the top destination by 2020, attracting 130 million international visitors" (Jones Lang LaSalle Hotels, October 2002) Most of the hotels in China are undergoing the process of management improvement.

The new techniques of planning by objectives and improved decision making are being implemented by following the lines of the foreign hotels in order to achieve the competitive edge among the industry participants. Another trend, which is gaining popularity in the industry, is the collaborative projects and ventures of the domestic and foreign hotels proving fruitful for both. The foreign personnel trains the trains the domestic employees about the modern techniques on the other hand the local hotel facilitates environmental and legal adjustments of the foreign hotels in the market.

The Chinese regulatory bodies have opened the hospitality industry for the foreign hotels but restricted them to the level of 3 star hotels in order to save the domestic hotels having weak position (Jones Lang LaSalle Hotels, October 2002). But with encouraging the foreign hotels to support the domestic hotels the Government has taken cautious measures to limit the role of the foreign hotels to effect the tourism market of the country.Most of the Chinese single hotels are joining into hotel chains in order to undertake better development and provision of strong financial back up in order to respond to the competition posed by the foreign hotels laced with most advanced facilities management and booking system.

Most of the single hotels need to undertake strong and aggressive strategic steps to keep themselves present in the market. This surge of drastic steps forces them to affiliate with the foreign large hotel chain such as Six continents, which are the symbol of aggressive and effective strategies.The adoption of the pattern of joining the hotel chain by the single hotels in China has lead to the domination of the large international hotel chain domination in the