The recipe for success

Christopher Koehler, vice president and managing director of Hyatt Hotels and Resorts China

“Now people are becoming more adventurous, especially those in Shanghai and among the younger generation. For them, the global food map is no longer divided into Western and Chinese cuisines. They want to discover and learn about very specific cuisines such as Kyoto Kaiseki, as well as traditional ones that can only be found in a small village far away from the city,” said Koehler.

Another factor that keeps Koehler and his chefs on their toes is the global trend of healthy eating where people are becoming increasingly inquisitive of the origins of the food on their plate and the environment in which animals are raised. Koehler attributes this to the fact that Chinese people today have traveled much more in the last 10 years than they ever did before.

Fifteen years ago, 70 percent of Hyatt’s clientele in China was made up of international travelers who were in China to set up offices and businesses. The tables have now turned and domestic tourists have instead become that 70 percent. Koehler also noted that most of their domestic guests are visiting for leisure instead of business.

Statistics from the National Tourism Administration of China showed that Chinese people made 100 million oversea trips in 2014, 10 times the number recorded in 1998 when the administration first started to track figures. The number of domestic trips in the past year is even larger — Chinese travelers have spent 3.03 trillion yuan ($474.97 billion) exploring their own countries in a staggering 3.61 billion trips, according to the National Bureau of Statistics of China.

In order to tap the popularity of travel within China, Hyatt will be expediating the opening of its new hotels in China. There will be 20 new openings within the next three to five years and it will almost double the current number of properties managed by the group since it entered the Chinese mainland in 1986.

The Hyatt Regency Chongming, tucked away on China’s third-largest island, is the latest opening by the group. Koehler described the island, which is located an hour away from downtown Shanghai and is one-third the size of Long Island in New York, as “a place featuring natural beauty with a handful of mom-and-pop cottage farms dotted around”. He said that the island also reminded him of the past when huge food production companies had yet to rule.

“When we open a new hotel, we don’t just ‘copy and paste’ even though that would be much faster,” said Koehler. “If it’s a hotel in Chongming, we want to zoom in and be as focused as possible. For example, the menu from its restaurant can’t be Chinese or Shanghainese cuisines — it needs to be a truly Chongming one that you may not even find in restaurants located hours away in (downtown) Shanghai.”

Koehler conceded that the hotel industry in Shanghai is oversaturated at the moment, which makes running a hotel particularly tough. However, he believes that quality will always emerge above quantity, and that being sensitive to the market sentiment will be paramount in a hotel’s quest for success.

“It doesn’t matter how many, but really how good they are. I don’t worry about the number of hotels in the market, although it sometimes dilutes the total market,” Koehler said. “I think those who understand the market and adjust to it will be successful and continue to be successful. So the most difficult thing to run a hotel today is really being relevant to the market.”

xujunqian@chinadaily.com.cn