Hong Kong's 25 largest hotels 2014

Hong Kong’s 25 largest hotels have maintained their rankings in 2014 with their number of rooms remained unchanged from last year, data from CBRE show.

It is important to note though that this year’s list was re-ranked to include four hotels that had been missed out in 2013. They are Renaissance Hong Kong Harbour View Hotel, Mexan Harbour Hotel, Pentahotel Hong Kong Kowloon, and Royal View Hotel.

Together, the 25 largest hotels have 20,979 rooms or 839 on average. The average daily hotel rate as at March 2013 is $1594.

The industry situation
Hong Kong Business’ spotcheck with hoteliers found that the year 2013 was quite a challenging year. While the local environment is encouraging, hoteliers said that the frequent change of the Tourism Law of China and the anti-bribery action by the Mainland government have both caused impact to the hotel industry. “With the implementation of the new Travel Policy of China effective 1 October 2013, we saw huge impact in terms of arrivals from Mainland as the number of tour groups has dropped by 44% on daily basis during the Golden Week of China, compared to year 2012 . Besides with the anti-bribery action, government officials become more conscious in terms of travel spending,” said Benedict Chow, GM of Harbour Grand Hong Kong.

Regal Riverside Hotel GM Peter Chiu also said that all hotels in Hong Kong were affected by the sudden slowdown of visitor groups from Mainland China in January last year. The new travel regulations, coupled with the Avant Flu scare in the summer, and other travel industry related incidents, he said, had created short term deterrence for travelers coming to Hong Kong. To prepare for sudden change, Chiu said that the hotel has already planned to place more emphasis on individual travelers rather than purely groups market.

On the local front, Chow said thatthe shortage of skilled and experienced labours will continue to be one of the challenges for hotel operators in Hong Kong, especially with an anticipation of around 22 hotels opening in 2014. “The relatively low unemployment rate in Hong Kong means there is keen competition in the labour market between different trades,” he said.

Outlook
Despite various travel related incidents and restrictions, Regal Riverside’s Chiu believes the mainland
visitors will be back and with more MICE being held in Hong Kong, the two theme parks Disneyland and Ocean Park will continue to attract visitors from Southeast Asia region. “The continual success of Macao casinos will no doubt create more multiple cities stops between Macao and Hong Kong. Opening of the Kai Tak International Cruise Terminal will start to have regular berthing from cruise companies that will bring long haul visitors to Hong Kong for one to two days stop, as well as the pre and post cruise stay,” added Chiu.

Twiggy Chow, Director of Business Travel Sales of Sheraton Hong Kong Hotel & Towers said that while the local market has been experiencing a softer inflow of business recently due to leisure travelers’ change of preference to other Southeast Asian countries, she believes that the industry will continue to experience growth moving forward with tourist arrivals up almost 15% in the past few years.

Government’s efforts and initiatives are also at work. John Girard, GM of Regal Airport Hotel said that the Hong Kong Tourism Board and tourism partners are taking the initiative to host and attract more mega events and projects to Hong Kong, such as the Feb 2014 Hong Kong Masters, billed as Asia’s only five star accredited international equestrian show. He particularly cited that a strong pick up is evident in the incentives and educational-related events.