AS OUTBOUND Chinese tourism continues to boom, luxury hotel group The Peninsula Hotels is padding up its hospitality experience for Chinese guests with the new “Long Qing” programme.
To be implemented at all of its nine hotels across Hong Kong, China, Thailand, Japan, the Philippines and the US from August 1, the programme offers Chinese guests familiar home comforts such as dim sum, congee, soya milk and Chinese-language newspapers. In-room printed materials will also come in Chinese.
The name of the new amenity programme comprises two characters – “Long” means “dragon” and by extension, the Chinese people, while “Qing” implies emotion and experience away from home.
The Peninsula Hotels vice president of marketing, Robert Cheng, said: “The Chinese market is definitely important for us and the Chinese are especially ready to invest in experiences.
“We see a good mix of travellers in our hotels from China, South-east Asia and the US, but definitely the Chinese numbers are catching up.”
Although unable to provide specific figures on the proportion of guests from China, Cheng said the Peninsula hotels in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong saw the highest number of Chinese tourists. Thailand has a “good showing” and the Philippine hotel is experiencing double-digit growth in Chinese customers.
Cheng shared that Peninsula caters to the Chinese love of shopping with last year’s launch of the Lifestyle Academy programme at its Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing hotels, where stylists take guests shopping and dish out professional advice.
Based on United Nations World Tourism Organization data, China is the world’s top tourism market based on expenditure (TTG Asia e-Daily, April 8, 2013) and some 100 million Chinese tourists are expected to travel outside China by 2020.
The Peninsula Hotels will open its 10th property in Paris at the end of next year. Most recently, the group has also announced new hotel expansion plans in London and Myanmar.
