Retail in Asia

In Sectors

Top hotel trends driven by China’s next generation of travellers

What are the top hotel trends in China this year? With relaunch and aggressive China expansion, New World Hotels has recently identified the 2011 top hotel trends.

  • Privacy: A change in communal spaces designed to be seen. Younger consumers more inclined to dine in the restaurant’s public spaces, preferring a more interactive dining experience.
  • Comfort food:  The focus is on the quality of the products, authenticity and simplicity and ingredients and less on the presentation.
    From concierge to connoisseur: With travellers’ growing use of social media to plan their trips, with instant access to what is hot and new, concierge in China need to step up their game to keep pace. More than just pointing out the closest convenience store, concierges have to become virtual connoisseurs of their cities.
  • Banish the boring banquet room: As hotels compete with increasingly novel offsite venues like galleries, pop up stores, and unconventional public spaces for events, traditional meeting rooms are being designed with flexibility and flair. Amenities like open kitchen bars, living room-style set-ups, and more residential and intimate settings are paving the way to bespoke events.
  • Designing the outdoor in and socialising inside out: Outdoor communal spaces are increasingly popular for dining, lounging, or simply taking in the scene. Lobbies are no longer the prime real estate for people-watching – more and more hotel restaurants have outdoor spaces and street access, rooftops that can open or are being configured with terraces and flower walls.
  • Online advice aunties: Social media is bringing chefs out of the kitchen, concierge away from their service desks and hotel wedding planners from their cubicles. Hotel associates are increasingly becoming online personalities – dispensing recipes, home entertaining tips, and design advice.
  • Online restaurant reservations: Guests already book hotel accommodations online. Next up is restaurant reservations. Not only convenient for both hotels and their customers, hotels can also maximise online marketing opportunities while customers can banish the busy signal during lunch rush hours.

The brand has also pointed out the three hotel features which are nearing extinction – safety deposit boxes at registration, since each guestroom has its own safe anyway; business centres, as today’s travellers come souped up with their office gadgets; and lastly, formulaic restaurants that neither appeal to an increasingly sophisticated traveller nor make commercial sense to hotels.