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Hangzhou hotels a hot ticket in economic downturn

By Wing Tan | May 11, 2009, Monday | Print Edition

ABOVE is heaven, below is Hangzhou." The picturesque city near the Grand Canal has been a famed tourist destination for centuries.

The tourism market in Hangzhou - with its long history, numerous scenic spots, advantageous location and convenient transport near cosmopolitan Shanghai - is heating up as the weather gets warmer.

In the first quarter of this year, Hangzhou received more than 11.23 million domestic tourist visits, a jump of 8.4 percent year-on-year, while the number of overseas tourists reached 444,000, up 0.1 percent. Total tourism revenue reached 15.99 billion yuan (US$2.34 billion), increasing 12.1 percent, according to Hangzhou Statistics Bureau.

The past May Day holiday proved to be another "golden holiday" for Hangzhou tourism market, which reaped revenue of 1.5 billion yuan. About 2 million tourists visited Hangzhou in the three days, an increase of 25.3 percent from a year earlier.

The booming tourism market is partly because of the issuing of the Hangzhou tourism coupons. Since March 1, Hangzhou government issued tourism coupons worth 150 million yuan.

Hangzhou hotels are among the biggest beneficiaries of the prosperous tourism market.

The hotels around the West Lake have been 100 percent booked on weekends; the rate is over 90 percent on Thursdays and Fridays and around 70 percent from Monday to Wednesday, Fan Xing, a sales manager of Wuyang Hotel, a four-star hotel near the West Lake, tells Hangzhou Daily.

"March and April are two months of business meetings and many companies like to hold various teamwork-building trips or spring tours to reward their employees this season," says Chen Jing, the PR manager of Xiaoshan Kaiyuanmingdu Hotel. The hotel's occupancy rate reached 97.4 percent in early April.

"The rooms are quite in short supply these days. Our guests have to book three or four days in advance," says sales manager Fang Yongjun of ELANINN, a chain hotel for budget travelers. "If you want a weekend room, you have to book at least one week earlier."

It's rather surprising that in these difficult times Hangzhou's hotels are performing very well.

"The crisis might have a greater impact on first-tier cities like Shanghai and Beijing than Hangzhou," says Fan. "By contrast, some four-star hotels, like us, have benefited from the crisis because those who wanted five-stars now choose four stars because of tight budgets."

As of the end of 2008, Hangzhou had 247 star-rated hotels, 13 of them five-star.

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