With a close proximity geographically and culturally with Taiwan, Xiamen is growing in stature as a destination for meetings and conferences. Originally from Taiwan himself, Daniel Cheng is general manager of the Xianglu Grand Hotel, Xiamen and is focused on growing the region into a new business travel destination.

If meeting planners are looking at a venue for their next conference in Xiamen, why should they choose your hotel?
It's just a brief 8-minute drive from the Xiamen Gaoqi International Airport. And the hotel is easily accessible to any of the city's business, shopping districts and tourism attractions.

The total conference, exhibition and banqueting area is 8,900 sqm, with two grand ballrooms each accommodating up to 1,000 guests, each one of which will be the largest in the city. Its 3000 sqm Atrium Garden can be changed into a large exhibition hall and receive large conference of over 1,000 people. This capacity is complemented by twenty-six additional function rooms catering to any number of event requirements with a comprehensive range of modern audio visual equipment, lighting support, and simultaneous translation facilities, all served by our internationally experienced management team.

Spacious guestrooms and suites range from 27 to 274 sqm in size and 12 types of rooms will satisfy all kinds of guests' requirement. Meanwhile, the Xianglu Grand's fleet of restaurants serve up an extensive range from contemporary flavors to traditional favorites, offering a variety of dining and entertainment choices, including a 900-seat Grand Buffet. In addition, 1,050 parking bays are prepared for conferees in hotel. So all the hotel guests can enjoy one-stop service of dining, living and meeting.

How do you feel your hotel will alter the hospitality landscape in this city?
No obvious influence at present.

The hotels in Xiamen are almost small ones with about 300 guestrooms. And the meetings held in Xiamen are mostly 100 to 200 person's meetings. In this case, all the other hotels in Xiamen can completely receive them. Xianglu Grand Hotel doesn't has much advantage comparatively.

Xianglu Grand Hotel's market orientation is mainly pointed to MICE, and its advantage is to receive medium and large conference. Xianglu Grand's appearance makes that over 200 persons' meetings choose Xiamen as their meeting position. For instance, Coca Cola's 10th Anniversary of 1,450 people, Dell's conference of 1,300 people, Pfizer's conference of 1,500 people are all held in Xianglu Grand Hotel. Its rich room resource, many restaurants and huge conference space provide the perfect choice for large conference.

How do you see domestic and foreign guest numbers changing in the coming years in Xiamen?
Along with more and more intimate relations between China mainland and Taiwan and their economy and culture' frequent communication, Xiamen, as the nearest city to Taiwan, and because of its life, culture and food closer to Taiwan, must be the preferred city and perfect flat for Mainland and Taiwan businessmen.

After Taiwan's tour market is open to tourists in China mainland, they're not likely to fly to Taiwan directly. Generally speaking, the tourists go to Taiwan via Xiamen commonly. So I think domestic guests' proportion will be much bigger than international one. But the Olympic Games in 2008 and Expo in 2009 will attract more international guests coming China. Xiamen is the another hot city of tour and economy trade after Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Xian and Lijiang. It will attract more tour groups and businessmen from Hong Kong, Taiwan and abroad.

What will be your focus in terms of hotel's revenue per available room? How do you position your property in this market?
In so far as the scale of the hotel, there is no real opponent to Xianglu Grand Hotel, because of difficulty to other hotels to receive the meeting of over 200 people by themselves. But the Grand's advantage is here.

At the same time, according to different requirement of conference group, Our rich and various room resources can provide flexible price, as well as some additional serial value. Through our perfect service, every conference guest will be the return guest.

What kind of business segment and percentage (corporate FIT, MICE, travel agency, leisure) does your hotel expect?
According to the scale of hotel, MICE and tour is the important point in sale. Corporate FIT is 16% in proportion, MICE 43%, travel agency 33% and others 8%.

Xiamen hotels have obvious geographical advantages to the Taiwan market. As a native Taiwanese, what's your market strategy to make Grand Xianglu hotel outstanding and surpass the competition in Xiamen?
By the opening of Xia-Jin sail line, Xiamen has already been the busiest city as the communication area between Mainland and Taiwan. Though such area advantage, the hotel plans to strengthen cooperation with Taiwan tour agent, and organize religion group, culture group, as well as exhibition group to come to Xiamen for religion sacrifice and tour, or traveling to Jinmen if possible.

At the same time, assisting Taiwan businessmen association' guide, the hotel provide much more favorable booking service for Taiwan businessmen via Xia-Jin sail line, attracting more Taiwanese to come Xiamen for sightseeing, tour, investment and developing hospitality.

How is Grand Xianglu hotel initiating a corporate social responsibility program in regards to safety, corruption, health, consumerism, and environment?
Along with people's high consciousness of environment protecting and efficient government policy, security, health and environment protecting is given to more and more attention. In this case, the contribution of hotel's environment protecting engineering has realistic meaning. We have already realized that there is a long way to go. Especially as a professional manager, he is not only to be good at dealing and management, but also to have strong sense of social responsibility. In the part of improvement and programming, the hotel is not only to fit for the requirement of environment protecting, but also to consider to control operation cost, which makes the hotel develop continually.

How are you working with the local government and tourism boards to make Xiamen a true MICE destination in China?
At present, we mainly launch on the following three parts as cooperation:

At first, we carry on favourable hotel golf journey, cooperate with several large golf courses in Xiamen to attract Taiwan golf groups and the whole national golf groups playing golf in Xiamen.

The second, we plan to cooperate with Xiamen Airline to carry on hotel- plane favourable serial service, it's called "By Xiamen plane and live in the Grand Hotel, sight-seeing Xiamen conveniently."

The third, by the Xia-Jin sail line, we plan to carry on ship-hotel favourable serial service, attracting more Taiwan tourists to come to Xiamen for tour and business activities.   

With more travelers and corporate bookers using the Internet to discover information about hotels and special deals, how is your company utilizing email marketing and web exposure to bolster your online presence?
The hotel provides 24-hour high speed Internet service in guest rooms and Business Center. The Internet speed is ten times than traditional speed and you can go surfing on Internet directly. The system also provide detailed information about hotel facilities, service items, features of food and beverage, tourist attractions, shopping guide and so on. Meanwhile, our guests can contact their own company's website freely, receive and send e-mail, use the software. Thus the hotel is the real office while traveling outside. All these high-tech hardware and software, produce good economic benefit, as well as social benefit.

(average: 2.50 out of 5)

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