THE CHINESE MARKET - Overbooked: The Exploding Business of Travel and Tourism - page 228

vision of business dealings. Since the government retains control over the tourism industry
in China from the top to the bottom, connections are essential.
“You can have all the resources, the expertise and professionals working for you, but
you are nothing without contacts,” said Albar. “Connections bring you to the table.”
For Marriott International, those connections came overnight with the 1997 acquisition
of the Renaissance Hotel Group. The principal owner of Renaissance was the New World
Development Company, a Chinese real estate and hotel powerhouse run by Dr. Henry
K. S. Cheng. With that purchase Marriott went from running nothing in China to man-
aging forty hotels and became connected to Dr. Cheng. His political ties go to the top of
the Chinese government, and he is a member of the standing committee of the Eleventh
Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference of the People's Republic of China.
With that political heft and his wealth, Dr. Cheng's views are heard at the very top of the
government. He is the ideal patron required for any international tourist group.
With that partnership Marriott has a presence in China, adding hotels and attracting
tourists, conventions, business travelers and local Chinese events. Bringing local Chinese
business into his hotel is part of a larger ambition, said Albar, to transform the Chinese
into fans of Marriott when they travel abroad.
“Our number-one objective here is to attract inbound travelers to China to stay at our
hotels. Our number-two objective is to influence Chinese outbound travelers to choose
Marriott when they travel overseas,” he said. “The market is that strong.”
As an example he cited a twenty-four-year-old Beijing couple that held their wedding
reception at his hotel. “It was elegant—food, flowers. When they went to the U.S., they
booked at a Marriott. They went to France, they booked at a Marriott.”
Like every other tourism professional in China, Albar knows his profits depend on cap-
turing a share of the outbound as well as the inbound China trade. Marriott announced
plans to open its hundredth hotel in China by 2015, a schedule that will require opening
one hotel every month for three years.
The competition is fierce. International-brand hotels—those owned by the Chinese
but designed and managed by an international chain—are opening faster in China than
anywhere else on the planet. “China, China, China” is the mantra for major chains like
Hilton, Intercontinental, Four Seasons, Hyatt, Ritz-Carlton, Marriott and Starwood. In the
five years ending in 2012, the number of international-brand hotel rooms grew 62 percent,
and that's just the beginning of the boom.
By 2014, Hilton will have quadrupled the number of hotels it manages in China. Hyatt
Hotels Corporation is doubling the number of hotels it manages in China. The Starwood
brand, which includes Sheraton hotels, is building its largest resort hotel in Macao, and
industry projections show that China could become its most important market soon, out-
pacing the United States. All of this adds up to a 50 percent increase in international-brand