{"id":34898,"date":"2005-11-11T04:04:24","date_gmt":"2005-11-10T20:04:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chinahospitalitynews.com\/2005\/11\/11\/how-will-chinas-hotels-cope-with-a-major-bird-flu-epidemic\/"},"modified":"2005-11-11T04:04:24","modified_gmt":"2005-11-10T20:04:24","slug":"how-will-chinas-hotels-cope-with-a-major-bird-flu-epidemic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chinahospitalitynews.com\/cn\/2005\/11\/11\/34898\/","title":{"rendered":"How Will China's Hotels Cope With A Major Bird Flu Epidemic?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The past two weeks have been a crucial test for China's hoteliers and travel businesses. The national government has limited the amount of online transactions, which will hurt travel agents and online bookings. Eerily still, more than 300 top Beijing hotels and restaurants were found to be using a poisonous detergent. Not to be outdone, both the United States and Chinese governments yesterday issued warnings that terrorists might target elite hotels in China in the coming week. And if that was not enough, more bird flu cases have been found in China, leaving many to fear of a SARS-like hit to China's travel industry.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In an online survey we started running on ChinaHospitalityNews.com last week, 743 industry professionals have participated in letting us know how prepared their hotels and businesses are in the event of an Avian Flu epidemic. While 20.46% of respondents said that their businesses are definitely prepared and 58.67% said their companies are mostly prepared, a disconcerting combination of 20.86% said they were either not really prepared or not prepared at all.<\/p>\n

It is time to either tear down your storefront or wedge yourself into a nice foxhole, because we should prepare for the worst.<\/p>\n

InterContinental's Simon Loh tells CNN that his hotel chain in Asia is stockpiling Tamiflu and buying chicken from only licensed, reputable dealers. Virgin Atlantic's Richard Branson in Great Britain says that he too has purchased enough Tamiflu to keep his airline staff protected. But what are other hotels and airlines doing in China?<\/p>\n

After the layoffs, closures, and lost revenue during SARS, I would have hoped that travel companies could have fortified themselves and their employees with enough confidence to have all said they were definitely prepared. But it seems that history might repeat itself.<\/p>\n

It is worrisome, but unfortunately not surprising, that many hospitality professionals still don't feel totally secure. The Beijing anti-spitting laws, which are still on the books, were quickly forgotten by the average China city dweller after normalcy returned. The same human evolutionary ability to forget pain can also cripple us if we forget life's tough lessons.<\/p>\n

Everything was hyper-inflated during SARS–fears, prejudices, and even Chinese listed tech companies' stock prices. And now with Avian Flu fears, it is time for each company to revisit their own post mortem of the SARS period to learn how they can prepare for a potentially devastating hit.<\/p>\n

An Avian Flu outbreak will hurt the entire hospitality supply chain. Consumers will not want to travel–or will be forbidden to do so. Airlines will lose their passengers. Hotels will have unfilled rooms. Hotels and airlines will stop purchasing goods from their suppliers, who will stop purchasing from the factories and farmers who supply them. Tourist destinations like the Great Wall, Forbidden City, and Terracotta Warriors will see declining tourist arrivals. And the employees who work for the airlines, hotels, supply companies, and tourist areas will be laid off or let go. And do not forget all the outbound China traffic that will slow to a trickle. We saw this all during SARS, and so we should unfortunately not expect changes during an Avian Flu outbreak.<\/p>\n

Once an outbreak ends, how can a hotel get back on its feet? Unfortunately for the hotels who lost so much revenue during this period, they will be forced to spend more money to dig themselves out of their holes. So they better start saving now.<\/p>\n

Hotels can concentrate on the local and expatriate market living in their cities. If the hotel is an international brand, they can use that to their benefit to show that their work processes are up to international standards. This is what the public relations mavens at InterContinental and Virgin are already doing. Long before international tourists start pouring back into the hotel beds, local residents are available to dine in those food and beverage outlets. Hotels need to offer cost-conscious specials to lure guests into those restaurants.<\/p>\n

China should be able to bounce back fairly quickly from any major problem; it is a dream travel destination for many around the world. But before either the bird flu or any future epidemic hits China's shores, the travel businesses themselves need to educate their staff on best practices and they need to instill a sense of full confidence that their businesses can ride through any storm.<\/p>\n

\n

By Danny Levinson
Publisher, ChinaHospitalityNews.com<\/strong>
<\/font>Danny has worked in China for over 8 years and travels frequently, mostly to Hong Kong, Beijing, and Shanghai. His views are his own and do not represent those of this publication, its investors, owners, or other staff. To comment on this article please email Danny at chinahospitalitynews@gmail.com<\/a>–though he can't always promise a response, he will read all messages.<\/em><\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The past two weeks have been a crucial test for China's hoteliers and travel businesses. The national government has limited the amount of online transactions, which will hurt travel agents and online bookings. Eerily still, more than 300 top Beijing hotels and restaurants were found to be using a poisonous detergent. Not to be outdone, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12723],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinahospitalitynews.com\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinahospitalitynews.com\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinahospitalitynews.com\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinahospitalitynews.com\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinahospitalitynews.com\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34898"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinahospitalitynews.com\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34898\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinahospitalitynews.com\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinahospitalitynews.com\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinahospitalitynews.com\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}