Following Platinum Tao, Huazhu Hotel Group has embarked on the journey of "going to sea". On October 8, Huazhu announced that its first overseas hotel, Orchard Road Singapore, was officially opened all season. The hotel also became the first direct hotel for Huazhu to "go to sea". So far, Huazhu has officially joined the domestic hotel group "going to sea" to seek gold. Previously, with the maturity of the domestic hotel market and the improvement of internationalization of domestic enterprises, domestic hotel groups have been increasingly "going to sea" cloth. Industry insiders pointed out that the current domestic hotel group "go to sea" gold prospecting is facing a lot of challenges. The higher human costs in some foreign regions and differences in laws and regulations have made it more difficult for domestic hotel groups to "go to sea".
In recent years, due to the continuous growth of China's outbound tourism market, many domestic enterprises also seek to divide the "cake" of outbound tourism. According to the "Big Data Report on Chinese Tourists'Outbound Travel 2018" published jointly by China Tourism Research Institute and Ctrip Tourism Big Data Joint Laboratory, the number of Chinese citizens' outbound tourists is close to 150 million, an increase of 14.7% over the same period of last year, and the per capita consumption of overseas tourism is also about 800 US dollars. Fu Tianzhu, CEO of First Travel before the founding of PRC, told Beijing Business Daily that the outbound tourism market of Chinese tourists has increased year by year, which also provides an opportunity for the development of Chinese local hotel brands in overseas markets.
Prior to this, domestic hotel groups such as Jinjiang and Putao had their own layout overseas. In April this year, the Lifeng brand of Putao Group opened its first hotel in Indonesia, and the hotel group has more than 20 "going to sea" projects in the global market. Not only that, in June this year, another major domestic hotel group's first trip, such as Home, revealed the idea of "going to sea" cloth after it landed its first transportation hub-type characteristic hotel with the Spring and Autumn Group.
In the upsurge of domestic hotel groups planning to seek gold in overseas markets, some insiders point out that domestic hotels are facing many challenges in overseas development. A Hotel Executive pointed out that, first of all, laws, regulations and policies at home and abroad are different, which depends on whether foreign managers should be hired. In addition, some foreign markets have high human costs, so when hiring local employees, they need to account for the cost. Previously, Zhang Min also said frankly when talking about overseas plans, "Many employees of Huazhu have no background of working abroad, and their language skills are slightly weak, so Huazhu hopes to find overseas local partners to work together to enter the overseas market."
Not only that, the domestic hotel group "going to sea" is also facing more intense competition with the International Hotel group. It is reported that Marriott, Hilton, Continental International and other international hotel groups are opening high-end hotel brands in the Southeast Asian market. Zhao Huanxuan, chief knowledge management expert of Huamei Hotel Consulting Co., Ltd., pointed out that the overseas development of China Hotels Group is still in the tentative stage. At this stage, the brand awareness of China's local hotel management companies is not enough. In addition, there is also a need for strong backstage system support. These are all issues that need attention.