China loves a brand – but now some Western companies are betting that China will love a Chinese brand even more than a foreign one.
InterContinental Hotels Group, the world’s largest hotel group by number of rooms (and China’s largest international hotel group), says some Chinese guests want a different hotel from what the West has traditionally offered.
“There is rising demand for something that is truly Chinese – and not the Western view of what is Chinese,” says Keith Barr, IHG’s Greater China CEO. So InterContinental Hotels is launching a new upscale made-for-China hotel, because China’s “emerging affluent class” -which could be twice the size of its US counterpart by 2015 – is not happy with standard Western hotel design. “They want the assurance of an international brand….but they are very proud to be Chinese,” he told a media lunch in Shanghai on Monday.