HMH Looking to Attract More Chinese Guests

HMH - Hospitality Management Holdings is eager to have its share of the Chinese outbound travel market and is aggressively promoting various properties in the country by participating in trade events such as China Outbound Travel & Tourism Market (COTTTM) as well as organising a series of strategic road shows and sales initiatives.

Founded in Dubai 2003 in Dubai, HMH – Hospitality Management Holdings is a fully-integrated hotel management company that has five distinct brands catering to varied market segments from budget to luxury. These include The Ajman Palace Hotel, Coral Hotels & Resorts, Corp Hotels, EWA Hotel Apartments and ECOS Hotels.

HMH CEO Laurent A. Voivenel, said, "Demand for UAE as a preferred destination among Chinese travellers is no doubt growing. It is vital to increase our brand exposure in China at this point, as it has enormous potential for growth. It could open up significant revenue streams for affordable hotel brands such as ours. We are, therefore, monitoring closely the Chinese market that is proving to be an increasingly lucrative source of visitors and are gearing up to cater for preferences of these travellers by appointing Chinese speaking staff as well as customising menus, entertainment, etc."

According to China Outbound Tourism Research Institute, China is the biggest outbound tourism source market in the world with more than US$160 spent by 116 million travellers in 2014.

The total outbound tourist numbers are expected to reach 200m by the end of the decade, while travel spending will triple.

Fuelling this growth are mainly Chinese millennials who make up a large and growing slice of the country’s most affluent citizens. It’s estimated that there are around 300m of these young consumers born between the early 1980s and 2000.

Chinese millennials are big spenders on international travel and typically make four trips outside their country per year, twice as many as their Asian peers.

Dubai will remain a popular choice for Chinese travellers heading to the Middle East and Africa region, with tourist arrivals set to almost double (up by 97%) to more than 540,000 travellers by 2023 as compared to 276,000 in 2013.

According to Dubai’s Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing (DTCM) China moved from tenth position to seventh, experiencing 24.9% growth in the last 12 months with 344,329 hotel guests compared to 275,675 in 2013.