New trend [New trend of budget hotels: local brands exert their strength]

Economy hotel may be the last bucket of gold in China hotel service industry.

At the Zhuhai Summit of the 3rd China-foreign Hotel Forum, which ended on June 20th, 165438+ Li Huasheng, Chairman of Guangdong Hotel Management Group Co., Ltd., a local hotel brand, and Sun Jian, CEO of Home Inns, were both elected as the top 10 White Gold Awards for Chinese and foreign hotels.

2004 is considered as the "first year" for the development of budget hotels in China. Since that year, budget hotels in China have started to enter the fast lane. Some surprising news came out at this meeting: Home Inn plans to form 200 stores in 2008, and plans to go public; Jinjiang Inn plans to develop 200 chain stores in the next three to five years and eventually open 1 000 stores nationwide. Guangdong Hotel Management Group, which mainly deals in 4-5-star high-end hotel brands, entered the economy hotel market for the first time this year and launched the "Guangdong Star" brand. It plans to expand the number of "Guangdong Star" in China to 50 in five years.

Obviously, in the face of foreign brands such as Accor in France and SUPER8 in the United States, local brands have accelerated their expansion.

"The 2008 Beijing Olympic Games and the 20 10 Shanghai World Expo will be the golden age for the development of budget hotels. Local enterprises must intensify their efforts to build their own leading brands. In foreign countries, budget hotels generally account for 70% of the hotel market share; In China, this ratio is less than 10%. " Xu Jing, Director-General of the Asia-Pacific Region of the World Tourism Organization, who attended the meeting, said that budget hotels are the most potential market for the hotel industry in China in the future.

According to the data of China Hotel Association, the operating profit rate of budget hotels can reach 50% in the current situation of overall loss of China hotel industry. For example, the average room occupancy rate of budget hotel brands such as Jinjiang Inn is 98%.

However, compared with foreign brands, insufficient brand effect has become the weakness of local enterprises.

"The high-end brand of China Hotel has been occupied by international giants, which is a great lesson for national brands." Li Huasheng said, "At that time, I worshipped foreign countries too much and didn't objectively see the advantages and disadvantages of international brands."

The importance of brand is self-evident. Wu Junlin, Secretary-General of the 3rd China-foreign Hotel Forum, believes that with the application of Internet in hotel promotion and reservation, the constant updating of marketing methods and the homogenization of hotel products, the hotel's ability to control customers is getting weaker and weaker. "In this context, the brand's appeal is outstanding," Wu Junlin said.

Li Huasheng believes that the expansion mode of budget hotels is quite special, usually in the form of leasing. National brands have advantages over foreign brands in site selection, negotiation with owners and relations with the government. "Before economic international brands have time to lay out China, national brands should quickly seize the market and become stronger brands."

Sun Jian, CEO of Home Inn, also said that domestic brands must "practice hard" to avoid being shuffled.

According to the introduction of China Hotel Association, the association is currently cooperating with leading domestic economy hotel enterprises, and published a statistical report on economy hotel business in China in early 2006, and formulated relevant industry standards. The association also pointed out that the brand chain operation with unified brand image, unified marketing system, unified service standard and unified management mode will be the development strategy of future economic chain hotels.