City to upgrade inns for Expo
18/4/2005 16:38
Jane Chen / Shanghai Daily news
Shanghai's tourism
authority plans to upgrade the lower-end hotel industry by introducing
franchises to the existing 2,600 hostels and inns, today's Laodong Daily
reported.
"The move is aimed at regulating the market by promoting franchised
hostels and inns in four areas: property, management, standards and marketing,"
said Chen Xueyu, deputy director of the market administration department of the
Shanghai Tourism Administration, in the Laodong Daily report.
While upgrading
the city's economy hotel sector to prepare for the huge influx of visitors
expected during the 2010 Shanghai Expo, the move will also help the local small
hostels and inns to improve their competitiveness in the face of the huge inflow
of overseas budget hotel chains, Chen noted.
According to the government
figures, the 2010 international Expo event will attract over 70 million visitors
from home and abroad, or nearly 400,000 per day. The visitors may reach 650,000
during the peak period.
Shanghai has announced it will not build new hotels
to accommodate these visitors. Instead, it will encourage a natural growth of
the existing hotel sector to provide 600,000 beds in 2010.
Currently, there
are nearly 3,000 hotels and inns in Shanghai, including 362 star-rated hotels
that provide a combined 90,000 beds, according to Hu Shengyang, chief executive
officer of www.inn.net.cn.
The remaining 2,600-odd are lower-end hostels and
inns in the back lanes throughout the city, providing about 170,000 beds. Of
those, only about 1 percent are operated under branded franchise chains while
the remaining are operated independently.
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