Dai Bin | Striving for the Modern Tourism Accommodation Industry of the National People - Speech on the 20th Anniversary of the Establishment of Zhejiang Hotel Industry Association

At the invitation of the Zhejiang Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism and the Zhejiang Hotel Industry Association, Dai Bin, President of the China Tourism Research Institute, attended the 20th anniversary event of the establishment of the Zhejiang Hotel Industry Association in Jinhua and delivered a commemorative speech entitled "Striving for the Modern Tourism Accommodation Industry of the National People". The full text is as follows. Dear colleagues and industry friends, on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the establishment of the Zhejiang Hotel Industry Association, industry elites are gathered at the Junlan Hotel in Jinhua to commemorate glorious years, reflect on a bright future, and take responsibility and commitment for high-quality development.

Looking back at history, Chinese hotel staff have always adhered to keeping pace with the times, fully demonstrating their profound patriotism and outstanding professional spirit. In 1979, Deng Xiaoping, the chief designer of reform and opening up, issued the famous "Mount Huangshan Talk", which opened the curtain of the era of rapid growth of inbound tourism and also opened the modernization process of the hotel industry in line with international standards. From the dispatch of a team from the Peninsula Hotel in Hong Kong to manage the Jianguo Hotel in Beijing, to the call of the former National Tourism Administration for the entire industry to learn from Jianguo Hotel in 1984, and then to the large-scale introduction of international brands such as Shangri La, Hilton, Sheraton, and Hyatt, the hotel industry has completed the ideological, organizational, and institutional preparation of "using the west as the standard and import substitution". In 1988, with the help of experts from Spain and other countries, and based on the experience of other countries, the former National Tourism Administration drafted the "Classification and Evaluation of Tourism Foreign Related Hotels", which was approved by the standardization authority and promulgated in the form of national recommended standards. Under the strong promotion of administrative power, star rated hotels quickly became synonymous with high-quality lifestyle and a benchmark for modern service industry. Five star hotels such as Guangzhou Garden Hotel, White Swan Hotel, Xiamen Yuehua Hotel, Shanghai Portman Hotel, Nanjing Jinling Hotel, Beijing Jianguo Hotel, and Zhaolong Hotel shine brightly in China. At that time, if someone decorated like a star rated hotel, it definitely meant modernity, fashion, and style. That was an era of enlightenment, brand introduction, and quality display, as well as the youth of Zhang Rungang, Xin Tao, Lan Haiqing, Gao Tianming, and others who returned from studying in Europe and America to serve their country. It was also the creative era of Zhejiang hotel people such as Wu Qiyuan, Chen Miaolin, and Le Zhiming. What a nostalgic era when the country has needs, the career has a stage, and young people have dreams!

With the "National Day Golden Week" in 1999 as a symbol, China's tourism industry entered the era of mass tourism based on national consumption. Urban and rural residents, who are dozens of times more than inbound tourists, urgently need new inns that are suitable for their living habits and consumption budgets in order to appreciate the magnificent mountains and rivers and appreciate the beauty of culture. The reason for using the name 'inn' with an ancient flavor is that they have historically been a business model that caters to the needs of lower tier markets and basic needs, and has grown wildly. History has repeatedly proven and will continue to prove that every market expansion and consumption change will bring about significant changes and innovations in market models and business forms. Economy hotels represented by Home Inn, Seven Days Inn, Hanting, Jinjiang Inn, and Xinyandu, as well as the brand spectrum derived from them, have created a new era in which local enterprises dominate emerging markets. Sun Jian, Zheng Nanyan, Ji Qi, Wu Hai, Wang Haijun, Cheng Xinhua and other entrepreneurial groups have created their own glory and dreams through continuous service innovation, product iteration, and brand creation, allowing hotel staff to win the respect of the whole society for the first time at the level of capital and market. In this process, Zhejiang Jun, represented by Kaiyuan, Junlan, and Ledison, has steadily advanced in the high-end business and vacation fields, forming a hotel spectrum with Chinese characteristics.

The new era has ushered in a new stage of comprehensive development of mass tourism and rapid growth of the tourism accommodation industry in the past decade. Middle end luxury hotels such as Yaduo, Orange, Dongcheng, and boutique homestays mark the beginning of a new stage of "reasonable growth in quantity and effective improvement in quality" for China's hotel industry. If star rated hotels are the success of management and economy hotels are the victory of capital, the creation of homestay and luxury hotel brands indicates the conscious growth of humanistic economy in the field of tourism accommodation, and an era of refinement and elegance for the public is coming. A group of homestay brands that integrate into the local natural environment and living atmosphere, supported by technological elements, cultural creativity, and commercial innovation, such as Hua Jian Tang, Shu Frog, and Huanghe Su Ji, have won dual recognition from the capital market and tourism market. New types of vacation hotels that promote excellent culture and modern tourism industry, such as Senbo, Fangcaodi, Junlan, etc., have begun to emerge independently in the process of high-quality development of the tourism industry. More and more hotel owners are beginning to agree with the business philosophy that true Chinese service must be the result of combining modern management science such as Taylorism, Hawthorne's experiment, Herzberg's two factor theory, and circuitous production concepts with the specific practices of China's tourism and accommodation industry, as well as the excellent traditional Chinese culture. It must be aimed at the widest tourism market and the most core accommodation needs, using commercial power to enable the largest number of tourists to travel with dignity and have warm accommodation and meals. A tourism accommodation brand that can truly internationalize and globalize has always had a profound ideological foundation and clear value orientation. The height of the hotel industry has never depended on the strength of serving the strong, but on the warmth of serving the general public.

Colleagues, colleagues in the industry,

Looking at the current situation, Chinese hotel staff should pay more attention to the concerns of the country and the people in the era of mass tourism. After building a moderately prosperous society in an all-round way, China has embarked on the great journey of Chinese path to modernization to promote the overall rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. Correspondingly, mass tourism has entered a new stage of comprehensive development, with sightseeing, leisure, and vacation becoming daily life options for urban and rural residents, and increasingly becoming a rigid demand for a better life for the people. It is worth noting that the tourism and leisure market is further sinking, with small and medium-sized cities, central towns, and rural residents joining the ranks of leisure vacation experiences. Tourists' travel distance and destination stay time tend to be extended. At the same time, we also need to see the urban middle class, middle-aged and young business travelers, young and elderly tourists in the 1950s and 1960s, and study abroad travelers mainly consisting of primary, secondary, and tertiary students. They have rich travel experience, high consumption budgets, and relatively abundant time, and their demand for tourism accommodation is becoming more diverse, personalized, and high-quality. In addition to changes in tourism accommodation demand and market changes, innovation in accommodation formats such as vacation properties, RV campsites, motels, airport hotels, and study camps has also put more realistic innovation pressure on traditional star rated hotels, economy hotels, government hotels, and homestays. If the traditional tourism accommodation industry cannot provide stable quality assurance, product iteration, and market innovation, it may face the danger of marginalization. The new strategy for Chinese hotel personnel in the new era must and can only be to safeguard tourism rights, promote tourism consumption, and advance the high-quality development of the tourism industry in the same direction as the national strategy, cultivate new driving forces for innovative development in the tourism accommodation industry, uphold the bottom line of safety production, the red line of ideology, and the benchmark of service standards, and meet the quality requirements of mass tourists at a higher level.

We need to make efforts to solve the long-term problems of excessive tourism accommodation and structural imbalance. In the first half of 2023, the tourism economy entered a new channel of comprehensive recovery, but the sense of gain varies among different regions and types of tourism accommodation institutions. The average occupancy rate of different star rated hotels in the first quarter ranged from 38% to 52%, with the lowest rate for two stars (38.44%) and the highest rate for five stars (51.72%). If we look at the general tourism and accommodation industry, the data is even more pessimistic. There is both a problem of supply scale exceeding the total demand growth rate, as well as a shortage of high-quality vacation hotels, parent-child hotels, business hotels, and homestays that meet different levels of consumer demand. Overall, oversupply is a historical challenge affecting the sustainable development of the hotel industry, while structural imbalance presents an opportunity for hotel innovation and high-quality development of the tourism and accommodation industry. At any time, in any region or market, as long as there is competition, the industry will have the driving force for innovative development. There is competition, and the industry will do everything possible to please consumers, which is the norm of a market economy. It should be emphasized that no company, brand, or restaurant can please all consumers. Each brand can only meet specific markets, and each business model can only adapt to specific eras, regions, and cultures. Today's entrepreneurs and hotel industry practitioners should pay attention to demand and research the market. They should not only fully focus on the new consumer group represented by young people and their predicted future, but also recognize the relatively stable basic market represented by middle-aged and elderly customers. The stable consumption of the basic market is like a hard riverbed of mass tourism demand, which is the most stable market support for the development of the tourism accommodation industry, relative to the fashion needs of young customers. How to maintain strategic determination, meet stable demands with classic services, and meet new demands with more flexible production methods has become a question that contemporary hotel professionals must answer and answer well.

The hotel industry also needs to pay close attention to the real pressure of human resource shortage and insufficient application of technology. I often hear from friends in the industry about the problem of talent shortage, and even the embarrassing situation where the tourism market has recovered but hotels cannot recruit frontline employees. From the perspective of talent cultivation, there are more and more undergraduate tourism colleges that have entered the country's first-class majors and national quality courses, obtained many high-level scientific research projects, and published tens of thousands of papers every year. However, why are there fewer and fewer young people willing to apply for related majors such as tourism management and hotel management, and the graduates trained are also unwilling to enter the hotel industry? Colleges should reflect on themselves, and the industry should also reflect on themselves! If everyone is complaining and roast, or even blaming each other, and can't come up with a practical way, how can the industry progress? Instead of just sitting and talking, it's better to take action. Everyone needs to start from themselves in order to drive the development of the entire industry. Only on rainy days can you hold an umbrella for others, and on sunny days will others come with you. Besides education, the insufficient application of technology and slow digital transformation are also obvious practical problems. Thirty years ago, hotel staff who mastered SOP and knew how to apply service processes and technical standards were experts. If one can learn another foreign language, accumulate a few years of experience, understand some of the ways of the world, and quickly become a middle to senior level manager. That was an era when hotel owners defined restaurants because the demands of hotel guests were relatively stable, and mature and experienced professional managers were also relatively scarce. Today is an era where tourists define the tourism industry and consumers define the hotel industry. Technology, culture, creativity, marketing, and digitization are reshaping the knowledge system and professional abilities of hotel workers. For the hotel industry, digitization is not a choice for the future, but a place of death and a way of survival for today.

Dear colleagues and colleagues in the industry, the best way to inherit history is to create new history, and the highest respect for hotel staff is to create more new formats that keep up with the times and create a new pattern of high-quality development in the tourism and accommodation industry. This pattern should be created by the hotel staff of the new era, adhering to the national standpoint, following the direction of the masses, and using scientific methods.

The future tourism accommodation industry should be ethnic, with a high degree of recognition of Chinese civilization and global influence in the world tourism development system. In the 5000 year process of civilization evolution, in order to meet the accommodation needs of different travelers in different historical periods, China has created a variety of formats such as guesthouses, post stations, inns, guilds, restaurants, and hotels. In the past forty years, the hotel standards and industrialized management models of European and American countries have greatly reduced the growth space of traditional business formats while improving the modernization level of hotels. Whether it is high-end business and vacation facilities, or personalized homestays and inns, it is time to creatively transform and innovate the traditional culture of the national reception industry. We cannot just talk about vacation hotels as simple as sunshine, beaches, and seawater. Instead, we should vigorously develop vacation formats with multiple spaces and scenes, such as mountain residences, water residences, rural residences, and urban residences, in the context of Chinese aesthetic values such as the benevolent enjoying mountains, the wise enjoying water, the joy of sharing alone being better than that of sharing with others, and the peace of mind being at home. We cannot simply talk about brand as market orientation, marketing promotion, and professional manager operation. Instead, we should cultivate excellent traditional culture and use socialist advanced culture to guide the innovative direction of the tourism and accommodation industry. At any time, culture is the deepest and most enduring force shaping the direction of industrial development. People are always the most valuable driving force for hotel innovation and the most beautiful scenery on the journey.

The future tourism and accommodation industry should be accessible to the general public, always creating happiness for the largest number of people, and sharing the fruits of development with the largest number of people. There is no force that can stop people's longing for a better travel life, nor any reason that can obscure the original intention of hotels to serve tourists and share beauty. Affected by multiple favorable factors such as relaxed policies on residents' travel and contact consumption, stable and positive macroeconomic conditions, and multiple measures taken by the central and local governments to promote consumption, the tourism economy in the first half of 2023 has entered a comprehensive recovery path of "high opening and stable growth, strong supply and demand, and accelerated recovery". During the five-day labor holiday, the number of domestic tourists and tourism revenue both exceeded the same period in 2019, with an average travel distance of over 180 kilometers. The market indicators, city heat, and tourist satisfaction for holidays, months, and quarters, as well as the month on month and year-on-year data, have all indicated that the tourism economy has reached a strategic turning point and entered an irreversible new path of recovery. While maintaining confidence, hotel staff should closely monitor the increasingly segmented market, personalized demands, and fierce competition, and pay attention to listening to the voices of different groups, including "small town youth," "reverse tourists," and "special forces tourists. In response to the social needs of local residents and foreign tourists, the focus is on researching the functional updates and scene creation of banquets, weddings, conferences, fitness, and entertainment. We can organize more food festivals and cultural events. A good hotel is a new space that allows tourists to experience the blooming of their taste buds and dreams. A good restaurant is not only in the market but also in society, and should be able to become a driving mechanism that connects tourists, communities, and residents, promoting common development. In June 2021, Zhejiang began to undertake the significant mission of building a demonstration zone for common prosperity with high-quality development. In the process of exploring the construction of a common prosperity and beautiful society, the tourism and hotel industry has formed a number of cases of community consultation, co construction and sharing, such as the Gongfu Apartment in Anji Hanggai, Grandpa's Youth Hostel, Bodhi Valley, Guoyun Mountain Residence, Yinju Jiushe, etc. From a national perspective, these cases have the practical possibility of replication and promotion.

The future tourism accommodation industry should be scientific, accelerating the pace of modern service industry construction through technological applications and digital transformation. The hotel industry in the new era should drive product iteration and business innovation through demand, and also create new supply to lead future demand. To achieve this ideal goal, we cannot rely solely on traditional human resources, ways of thinking, and management models. The profound transformation of the hotel industry system by technology is a requirement of the times and a necessity of history. Those who cannot see the trend clearly or turn a blind eye to it will eventually fall behind the pace of the times and be eliminated. Where does the source of customers come from? In the past, it came from individual customers who signed up with clients, travel agencies, and stores, but today it comes from online channels such as membership systems, OTA, mini programs, and short videos. Where does tourist satisfaction come from? In the past, it came from the warm interaction between front desk, restaurant, housekeeping, cleaning, security and other staff and tourists. Today, it comes from facial recognition check-in and check-out at the front desk, intelligent guest rooms, metaverse scene experience, and ubiquitous and omnipotent robot efficient services. Overall, the technology application in the hotel industry is still in the early stages of improving production efficiency and meeting existing needs. The future digitization will create new demands, which may bring revolutionary changes to the tourism accommodation industry. It should be noted that the digitalization strategy of the hotel industry does not lie in the technology itself, nor in the fact that more and more technological elements are better, but in the interface friendliness and service efficiency of contactless services.

Finally, I hope that all colleagues can find ways to attract more young people, especially graduates from tourism management, hotel management, and exhibition management related majors, to join the hotel industry, providing them with positive values, professional spirit, and professional abilities, as well as attractive salary and high growth opportunities. Hotels are the hotels of hotel people. An industry that cannot continuously attract young people to enter has no future. Regardless, we must not let young people's career dreams be shattered. This is our common responsibility. I hope educators and entrepreneurs can have more communication and interaction, telling young people about a real hotel industry with temporary difficulties and a brighter future. Priority should be given to cultivating students' optimistic, positive, healthy, and upward attitudes towards life, as well as their professional spirit of courage to take responsibility, good communication skills, tolerance, and sharing. We cannot draw a big cake like "global industry leaders" or "international hotel elites" from the beginning. If there are really any hotel elites, it's not that they have gained much fame and fortune from the industry, but that they have devoted their lifelong talents and efforts to the people's tourism rights and the high-quality development of the hotel industry, just like you used to be!