Room with a view

By Ding Qingfen (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-06-16 10:55

And the first destination abroad was China. In 1989, Marriott opened its first Chinese hotel, the JW Marriott Hotel Hong Kong, which was also its first hotel in Asia.

Garside was then transferred from general manager (GM) of JW Marriott Hotel in Los Angeles to GM of the first China hotel, and his career has since been closely connected to the world's most populous nation and fastest growing economy.

What attracted Marriott to HK at that time was "the cheap labor costs", but the reason Marriott did not choose Chinese mainland to invest in which has a lower labor cost than Hong Kong lied in the immaturity of the local hospitality market.

Mainland business

Since1978 HK-based Peninsula Hotels moved to the mainland. In April 1982 Beijing Jian'guo Hotel, the first foreign hotel group entered the mainland market. The company was followed by other international groups. However, the local hospitality industry during the 1980s and the early 1990s was still in its infancy as a result of the slackened tourism market.

It was Hong Kong, especially in the 1990s, that set quality standard for the global hotel business. Usually "many executives from the US and Europe quickly flew back to HK and stay there after having handling business in the mainland," Garside recalls.

The Marriott HK hotel has a unique policy. It was the only one of its kind to conduct a two-day-off system for all associates, not only for managers, and was also one of the few that provided the associates a non-hierarchy environment where they could call each other, and even their bosses, by their first name, and encouraged them to make decisions on how to best serve guests.

It was not until 1995 that Marriott decided to crack the mainland market by opening Shenyang Marriott Hotel in Northeast China's Liaoning province, the first five-star hotel in the provincial capital. Two years later, it signed a package of hotel properties, seven in total, including Courtyard by Marriott Beijing, Courtyard by Marriott Shunde and The China Hotel, Guangzhou.

Stimulated by the stronger local economy and the booming tourism market, in the past 13 years, Marriott's portfolio in China has grown quickly, covering more than 30 hotels offering 11,547 rooms representing its six major brands.

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