'Golden triangle' gives Longemont a leg up

The Longemont Hotel Shanghai is no lab rat: its MICE facilities and prime location have already been tested by multinationals and business travelers, many of whom will use it as the base for their conferences and exhibitions during next year's Shanghai Expo.

What gives the hotel its edge is its Yan'an Road W. location in an area dubbed "The Golden Triangle" because it straddles three major hives of exhibition activity.

"We are in between Hongqiao district, which has large exhibition venues, Jing'an, which will be hosting some of the Shanghai Expo activities, and the Shanghai Exhibition Center," said Conny Bartl, director of the hotel's Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Exhibitions (MICE) department. "So we're in very good location."

The 53-storey hotel also offers stunning city views from its 511 rooms and provides easy access to Shanghai's two commercial airports. In terms of experience and facilities, what it brings to the table translates into world-class functions and a lucrative revenue stream.

"Our MICE business is the most important segment (of our hotel) because it combines the whole meeting revenue with the banquet and room revenues," said General Manager Udo H. Doring.

Spread over 1,900 sq m, its MICE area includes the biggest banquet venue and the second-biggest ballroom in Puxi as well as the latest audio-visual equipment.

"We can accommodate (everyone)," said Bartl, arguing that her meeting space is the biggest in western Shanghai if the smaller rooms and ballroom are added together. The small rooms allow for greater diversity by allowing bigger parties to splinter off, she added.

From Monday to Friday, the hotel has MICE management and banquet teams planning and problem-solving, and accommodating last-minute changes, in a professional manner. But at the weekend, when business should drop, the brides-to-be and their entourages start to show up.

"This is good for us, because the MICE business usually checks out on Friday afternoon, then the wedding planner comes and sets up the backdrops for the ceremony during the weekend," said Doring.

Meanwhile, in a bid to be more environmentally friendly, the hotel's management eschewed crystal chandeliers to let more sunshine filter through the skyscrapers' windows.

"For meetings, natural daylight is a big plus," said Bartl. "If you have a two-day seminar, you don't want to be sitting in a room completely enclosed, and that's the case in lots of other five-star hotels.

"One of our selling points is that every single ballroom and break-up room has windows."

Other selling points include: lavish guestrooms, seven restaurants and bars, and an indoor swimming pool (30m).

In fact, the guest rooms are the biggest in Shanghai, their 45 sq m comparing favorably with the 28 to 30 sq m seen at most other five-stars in the city.

Doring is optimistic the city's hotel sector will recover from the severe beating it has taken from the world credit crisis and the latest outbreaks of bird and swine flu in China.

"The pre-marketing for the expo is already taking effect, and we expect this to continue after the Expo as well. Shanghai is becoming a more interesting city on the world map," he said.

Shi Yingying

(China Daily 12/19/2009 page14)