China hotel market set to recover within five years...

…and other dispatches from the China Hotel Technology Alliance’s Annual Conference

Jing Zhu, Chairperson of the CHTA
at the opening of the conference

Well attended and organized, CHTA’s third annual conference was held last month in Macau. The overall theme was ‘Creating Value’ and while there were the occasional dull spots, overall the event delivered on what it set out to do.

China Hotel Market is set to recover within Five years

One of the first keynotes dealt with the China market recovery which was pinpointed to occur sometime within the next five years (let’s hope it is earlier rather than later…). Singled out as one of the key factors to set the scene for recovery were international brands, which need to be more flexible in terms of brand standards in China, rather than pursuing a cookie cutter approach to be successful.  

Talking about Millennials - again

Chinese Millennials -
not so different

There is of course no event worth its money that would not bring up the mystical Millennials, and at CHTA’s conference, it was Sunny Wang, Executive Director at HFTP’s Asia Research Centre – herself a Millennial – who took the stage to give us Baby Boomers and GenXers a lesson in all things Millennial. The most interesting for me was her assurance that Millennials are generally happy to play with technology in the room as a novelty factor, even if the technology is not essential. While this shouldn’t tempt hotels to over stack their rooms with gadgets, it is an affirmation that IPTV, second screen, Airplay and Miracast do matter, and will matter even more in the future.

But unlike the Millennials in the Middle East which are unexpectedly brand loyal, Chinese Millennials don’t seem to have a specific trait that makes them different from their peers in other geographies. However, speaking with one delegate from Singapore on the sidelines, he professed that unlike Millennials elsewhere who are generally lone wolf travelers, Millennials in Singapore like to travel in small groups of friends. This type of information has great value to hotel developers as it guides what types of rooms they should cater for, so I hope that someone in due time will make an effort and dissect Millennials likes and dislikes a little more granularly along the geographic divide, rather than just focus on general habits.

With Millennials gradually coming into force, some predicted the hotels of the future will be more like real estate that happens to have some hotel rooms, with rooms being re-purposed as offices, meeting and events spaces and the likes, and sometimes as a place to rest your weary head. While this may sound far-fetched now, one cannot help but wonder what our world will look like once the Millennials have well and truly taken over. As I said before, the 5-star hotel as we know it, for one, will be a thing of the past. And so perhaps will the hotel as we know it, who knows…

Creating Value in a Hotel with IT

The 'Creating Value' panel at the

3rd Annual CHTA conference in Macau

Hotels are run in a very old fashioned way, forcing people to speak to staff for requests rather than fulfilling them through self-serve options. This was the consensus during a panel discussion featuring eminent speakers from the likes of Peninsula, Banyan Tree and Westin hotels. So whatever happened to the coveted ‘personalised touch’? Again, blame the Millennials, but it is undeniable that there is a push away from person to person interaction to self-service – and thank heavens for it, too, if you ask me.

But the far more interesting question posed at the panel was what is stopping hotels from implementing IT to create value? While cost of course is a major factor, blaming the rapid evolution of technology is somewhat less convincing. 

We are on a kind of plateau at the moment when it comes to underlying technology developments. The one thing that’s continuing to change fast is consumer electronics, so as long as hotels underlying technology infrastructure is robust, enabling guests to interact with the hotel’s technology using their own devices should not be a major undertaking.

Finding the right talent to implement and support technology and getting staff to embrace technology rounded off the list of challenges identified by the panel. Nevertheless, the audience vote on whether IT can be a direct source of revenue at the end of the panel was an encouraging 75% yes.