Industry adjusts to suit growing middle class family travel market, Li Fusheng reports.

Hoteliers are poised to shift their focus from luxury to mid-scale hotels in China amid worries that the industry's glamour days are over in the second largest economy.

Delegates discuss new trends in the hospitality industry at the Asia Hotel Forum in Beijing in early September. Photos provided to China Daily

Dai said Chinese people made 2.5 trips on average in 2013 and that the figure was expected to nearly double to 4.5 by 2020.

He said that the predicted growth would offer great opportunities for the hotel industry because "no mater where you go and what you do, you have to stay at hotels at night."

Xia Nong, senior vice president of Hyatt International Hotel Management (Beijing) Co, said hotel groups should adjust their strategies as the market changes.

Xia said his hotel group was shifting focus from luxury to mid-scale accommodation as the market showed the majority of hotel customers were middle class families.

Xia's words were echoed by Raymond Tong, Accor Hotels' vice president for China.

Tong said the industry was rationalizing and accepting the concept of small-sized, mid-scale hotels.

"We are seeing more and more developers building smaller hotels instead of those that have some 800 rooms," he said.

As well as serving the wealthy, hotel groups are now catering to the demands of the general public by offering them tailored products at suitable prices.

At the China Tourism Academy Dai said the central government was helping stimulate the industry's development in its newly released regulations on boosting the reform and development of tourism.

"The regulations consist of 20 articles and one is dedicated to boosting the development of hotels, especially economy hotels, themed hotels and mid-scale hotels," he said.

Dai said that "when the Chinese government decides something it will do a great job", which was a positive sign for the hotel industry.

The regulations also highlighted infrastructure building and the 72-hour visa-free stay policy for overseas visitors.

There are eight Chinese cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Chengdu where foreign visitors can stay up to 72 hours without a visa as long as they hold air tickets to a third country.

The move is stimulating the inflow of overseas visitors, according to quote from Wang Yue, deputy head of the Beijing tourism commission, to Xinhua News Agency.

Wang predicted that the number of international passengers who travel via Beijing would reach 1.28 million in 2015, and half of them would visit the city.

Chris Clark, general manager of The Ritz-Carlton, Chengdu, said he believed his hotel would benefit from the policy.

"We have seen a very positive trend from our website in February that showed the average length of guests' stays increased to almost four days," he told China Daily in an earlier interview.

Meanwhile, statistics from STR Global showed that the hotel industry in China was showing signs of gradual recovery.

In the first half of 2014 the revenue per available room saw a slight slip of 0.8 percent from the same period last year, while it fell 6.2 percent year-on-year in 2013.

"It grew so rapidly and boosted our confidence," said Zhou Xin, a senior marketing manager at STR Global when she addressed the 2014 Asian Hotel Forum.

Zhou gave a summary of the performance of hotels in 12 major cities across the country.

Contrary to popular belief, Zhou said the demand for hotels was growing faster than supply in at least half of the 12 cities, including Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen.

She said demand was lagging behind supply in three cities - Chengdu, Tianjin and Zhengzhou - where hotels occupancy rates and the revenue per available room were falling.

Zhou suggested hotel groups in those cities should slow down their pace of expansion to strike a balance between supply and demand and to increase the revenue per available room.

Contact the writer at lifusheng@chinadaily.com.cn

By Li Fusheng ( China Daily )