Hotel group books into international market

GUANGZHOU: The five-star Dolton Hotel in Changsha, capital of Hunan province, is trying to build its brand on the international market.

In the second half of this year, Dolton Group will open a new five-star hotel - the Dolton Yulong Hot Spring Hotel - in Changsha's Ningxiang county.

The hotel is banking on the county's abundant hot springs to bring in guests.

Until 1993, Dolton Group's focus was running department stores. But it turned to the hospitality sector in the early 1990s, when the tourism and hospitality industries were still relatively unexplored.

In the 1990s, Dolton had only limited capital - not enough to set up a five-star hotel. It raised 800 million yuan in 1998 to open the Dolton Hotel later that year.

"It (opening the hotel) was the right decision at that time," Zhou Zhaoda, chairman of Dolton Group, said.

This year, the Hunan provincial government chose tourism and hospitality as core sectors to develop.

As the country has made staggering economic and cultural progress, incomes and living standards have improved significantly. That's pushing up demand for high-quality hospitality services.

"We insisted on running our hotel to world-class standards from the very beginning. We hope our hotel is an outstanding example to the local hospitality industry," Zhou said.

In June last year, Changsha hosted the Pan-Pearl River Delta Forum. Important guests from 11 regions stayed at the Dolton Hotel, including Donald Tsang, chief executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.

In 2004, Summer M Redstone, boss of media conglomerate Viacom Group, also stayed at the Dolton.

"The Dolton Hotel is as good as any world-class international hotel," Redstone said during his stay.

That year, more than 120 VIP guests from France, Germany, UK, Greece and Spain stayed at the Dolton Hotel while they attended a China-EU forum.

Dolton Group plans to become a well-known brand, and that means adding more hotels.

"We've run the hotel for many years, but now I think we must find a way to restructure or consolidate with other hotels," Zhou said.

In the late 1990s, there weren't many commercial hotels in Changsha. Zhou said the Dolton Hotel was opened to fill the gap.

But the group's Dolton Resort Hotel caters to a different set of customers.

Dolton Resort Hotel, near Tongsheng Lake in Changsha, opened in 2003, taking the group's business to the next stage.

"We didn't open the resort hotel on a whim," Zhou said. "We saw that the future market would be a combination of business and leisure."

Nowadays, the resort hotel is popular with guests from South Korea, Japan, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Innovation will be key in 2008 for Dolton employees as the group moves toward its goal of becoming a well-known brand, Zhou said.

(China Daily 04/15/2008 page39)