China Cities Grow For Overflow

<B> China Cities Grow For Overflow</B>

By Judy Jacobs

While the People's Republic of China is busy building its convention and incentives business in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, several secondary Chinese cities are hoping to tap into this important market. Encouraged by a rapidly growing number of domestic government and corporate meetings being held around the country, cities like Kunming and Guilin are laying the groundwork to attract more international meetings, incentives, conventions, and exhibitions business.

Kunming, the capital of Yunnan Province in southwestern China, may be one of the most rapidly developing destinations in the world. A flurry of construction is adding about 40 new hotels with nearly 16,000 rooms, which will double the current room count this year. And that comes on top of countless office buildings and apartment blocks under construction by a city frantically preparing for its role in the 21st century.

As usual, there's a catalyst for this development. Kunming will play host to China's first-ever international exposition, the 1999 International Horticultural Exposition, scheduled from May 1 through Oct. 31.

The government is spending $375 million on the event and the necessary infrastructure, including new roads, to carry it out. More than 60 countries and international organizations plan to participate. The end result will be new hotels, a new airport terminal and an extensive expo site, with a series of exhibition halls, which will be available for other uses after the exposition is over. The government intends to use these facilities, among other things, as tools to develop a burgeoning meetings and incentives industry.

Travel infrastructure investment is pouring into Kunming from many directions. Joint venture projects have been established with Hong Kong, Japanese, Singapore, Taiwan and Thai companies, and money from Beijing, Guangzhou and Shanghai is finding its way into many projects, according to Yunnan provincial tourism officials.

Locally, the Yunnan state tobacco company is investing more than $125 million in tourism, hotels and travel agencies in a diversification effort spurred by a diminishing number of Chinese smokers. The new hotels include the 245-room Courtyard by Marriott Kunming Hotel, scheduled to open this April in the western part of the city, about four miles west of the airport. It will be the city's second international chain property. The other is the Holiday Inn Kunming.

The new Marriott will boast more meeting space than any other Kunming hotel. Meeting facilities will include a 5,000-sq.-ft. ballroom and three smaller meeting rooms. The hotel also will have an indoor hot-springs swimming pool and four restaurants, one of which will have 20 private dining rooms.

Among other hotel projects under construction is the Green Lake Hotel, which was originally built in the 1950s, with an additional building added in 1992. The old building is being torn down to make way for a new one, and Kunming officials hope that an international hotel group will manage the property.

Meanwhile, a major expansion project at Kunming Airport added a new international terminal that was completed at the end of 1998. The airport now is able to handle 15 million passengers annually. Also, provincial carrier Yunnan Airlines plans to increase its international service this year. It currently flies to Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Macau, Singapore and Vientiane. At press time, tourism officials said that Yunnan Airlines was negotiating with Japan Airlines and All Nippon Airways to begin service between Kunming and three potential Japanese cities--Fukuoka, Osaka and Tokyo.

Meanwhile, Guilin--long a popular tourist destination known for scenery straight out of a Chinese scroll painting--is making a bid for more meetings and group business.

"We had more than 300 meetings in 1997, which was a 10 percent increase over 1996," said Tien Jie, chief of the Guilin Tourism Management Committee's Tourism Marketing and Promotion Department.

Guilin's success can be credited to its scenery, well-developed hotel product--including the Sheraton, Holiday Inn and Ronghu hotels--and the fact that tourism officials attend the Incentive Travel & Meetings Exposition and other international trade shows each year as part of the Chinese delegation.

To further improve its standing in the meetings and incentives market, Guilin officials plan to build a new international convention and exhibition center, which is scheduled to open in 2001 in a newly developing area on the city's eastern edge. The center will include an exhibition hall able to accommodate 1,000 booths and a 1,000-room hotel.

"We're going to promote the idea of a river cruise convention, with breakout groups going on a cruise on the Li River," said Tien Jie. The four-hour Li River cruise through the area's exquisite karst rock formations is the highlight of a trip to Guilin.

The river cruise seems to already be an integral part of meetings in Guilin. "We always include a one-day river cruise for our meeting groups," said Paul Wong, general manager of the Holiday Inn Guilin.

The hotel averages five meetings per month, with an average size of 50 people. It has a ballroom, however, that can handle up to 160 attendees.

Meanwhile, the government-managed Ronghu Hotel opened its new International Convention Center last fall. It includes a conference hall that seats 400 attendees and has facilities for simultaneous interpretation in six languages.