Hilton to open new hotels with bets on the hospitality boom
Hilton Garden Inn Beijing Yizhuang is scheduled to open next year. The hotelier plans to add more than a dozen new locations in China.
Hilton is scheduled to open around two dozen new hotels under the Hilton Garden Inn brand in China this year as it accelerates investment in the booming hospitality industry.
New openings are due to come up in important regions such as Nanjing, Chengdu, Chengde and Jinan during the next 12 months, reflecting increased demand for leisure trips and urban accommodations.
The new openings under the new "Hilton Garden Inn Gen A" regional prototype cater to tourists' preferences for stylish design, business-friendliness, and more flexible and accessible services, it said.
The public area would feature modules for drinks, retail, solitude, and sociability, as well as functional sections for dining, co-working, and flexible meeting spaces. The incorporation of sit-stand workstations in the guestrooms also responds to business-friendly and health-conscious trends.
Hilton Garden Inn hotels will provide a co-working area in the lobby.
Over the last four years, the operator of Waldorf Astoria and Conrad hotels in China has constructed 100 new hotels every year, and over 180 Hilton Garden Inn hotels are under construction or in preparation, with over 70 already operational.
"The Hilton Garden Inn brand is maintaining a strategy of focusing on prime locations in cities along China's high-speed rail network as we expand our footprint across the country," says Xia Nong, president of development for Hilton China & Mongolia.
China is already Hilton's second-largest market, with 671 properties in 220 destinations.
Leisure demand has dominated the tourist sector, but business and MICE (meetings, incentives, conferences, and exhibits) activities are also increasing.
During the Dragon Boat Festival holiday, China's transportation sectors handled up to 637.62 million passenger trips, an increase of 9.4 percent over the same period last year, and tourist spending increased by 8.1 percent to 40.35 billion yuan (US$5.67 billion).
Domestic tourists are forecast to undertake 6 billion trips this year, with the whole tourism industry earning 6 trillion yuan by the end of the year, according to the China Tourism Academy.
