Shanghai's soulful 'sexy lady'

By Mike Peters | China Daily | Updated: 2016-01-16 08:35

A major renovation has converted the Fairmont Peace Hotel into an art deco masterpiece, Mike Peters reports.

As the economy slows in China, doomsayers fret about luxury spending in goods, travel and accommodations. But George Wee, general manager of Shanghai's grande dame of luxury hotels, shrugs off such talk like water off a duck's back.

"We are blessed to be sitting in the city's most iconic hotel," said Wee of the Fairmont Peace Hotel, the art deco gem Sir Victor Sassoon opened as the Cathay Hotel in 1929. "Competition here is great, but we have a soul that no other hotel can match. You walk into our lobby, our mezzanine, and you just stop and stare and wonder what it must have been like to be here in Shanghai's glory days of the 1920s and 1930s.

"I often feel like I'm the custodian of a museum, except that the company expects me to also make money," said Wee, who is also Fairmont's regional GM for China.

Besides the gobsmacking look of the hotel, inside and out, the Fairmont Peace Hotel enjoys a location "second to none: right in the middle of the Bund - the center of the universe for Shanghai visitors - and also right on the pedestrian street, Nanjing East Road".

In 2010, Fairmont partnered with the hotel's owner, Jin Jiang, and closed it for a three-year renovation.

"We had the challenge to rejuvenate a grand but decayed old lady into a sexy contemporary lady of today," he said. He couldn't be more proud of the result, which combines modern luxury with the traditional art deco architecture and feels like an old jazz bar and a Saturday afternoon tea dance.

"It cost $100 million," he said of the rehab of what is a relatively small hotel with just 270 rooms. "You could easily build a brand-new hotel, a luxury hotel, for that. But the effort to preserve and protect the architectural treasure under that iconic green roof is an example of "how good Chinese are at preserving their heritage".

The hotel is full of period touches.

For example, he said, while the rooms and suites are large and comfortable, guests are taken up from the lobby in "tiny little lifts". But those period elevators are a charming part of the hotel's tradition, he said, and it was an easy decision to keep them the same - "except now they are not only beautiful, they are fast and air-conditioned".

Likewise, while the bathrooms are roomy as modern travelers expect, the bathtubs are claw-footed totems of the elegance of a century ago. And, of course, there is high-speed Internet for every guest.

Besides enjoying a prestige location in Shanghai, the city itself continues to be a draw.

Long a financial capital, Shanghai is about to reap the benefits of being a new free-trade zone, Wee said.

"And this year, Disney will open its biggest park anywhere outside the US," he added.

"There were 13 million international visitors last year, and 250 million domestic visitors. Can you imagine what Disney will do for destination travel here?"

Contact the writer at michaelpeters@chinadaily.com.cn