Expo highlights industry adapting to post-outbreak needs

With COVID-19 under control and accelerated vaccination across China, the tourism and catering industry is rebounding, according to participants in a first-of-its-kind expo in Shanghai last week.

Around 400,000 people attended the mega expo "Tourism Plus Shanghai", which combined four major exhibitions covering catering, hotel, travel and leisure sectors.

Spanning 600,000 square meters collectively, the exhibitions－Hotelex Shanghai, Hotel & Shop Plus, Boat & Lifestyle Show, and a themed tourism fair－were held in three venues in the city from March 29 to April 3.

"Shanghai is an important window of China to the world and it is a nexus of Chinese domestic and international tourism," said Fang Shizhong, director of the Shanghai Administration of Culture and Tourism.

"To help the industry come out of the effects of the pandemic quicker, we have organized this fair to step on the gas pedal for the recovery of domestic tourism," he said.

According to Ctrip, one of China's largest online travel agencies, the bookings for tickets to tourist sites during the Qingming Festival holiday on April 3-5 bounced back to 10 percent more than that of 2019.

Data from the Ministry of Commerce showed that during the Spring Festival holiday in February, retailers and restaurants across the country gained 821 billion yuan ($125 billion) in revenue. This is up 28.7 percent compared with the same period in 2020 when the COVID-19 outbreak forced many businesses to shut down.

"The pandemic hasn't changed people's demand for a quality life, for gourmet food and for travel and tourism. Demand will boom as spring comes," said Zhang Rungang, vice-president of the China Tourism Association.

At Hotelex Shanghai, where exhibitors showcased kitchen products and solutions, people were positive when asked about the outlook of the hospitality industry in China.

"We have received perhaps 500 potential clients in the first day, and about 30 percent want to be our franchisee," said a brand manager of a Shaanxi snack company.

Teh-han Chow, CEO of Fonterra China, said the company has gained an 11 percent increase in revenue for its food services and expanded to 22 cities in the last six months. "The effective control of COVID-19 in China has brought the business environment back to normal," he said.

Wu Jianfen, an official with the Zhejiang Provincial Culture and Tourism Department, said the guesthouse sector has been recovering from the pandemic since the end of last year.

"There are around 20,000 guesthouses in Zhejiang, and the international travel restrictions have pushed more city dwellers to spend holidays in the suburbs and countryside," she said.

At the Hotel& Shop Plus exhibition, new facilities－including artificial intelligence food delivery robots and disinfection robots launched by a Shanghai-based AI startup DeepBlue Technology－were on display.

"I can sense the demand for hotel upgrading at the exhibition, as many exhibitors came to our booth to consult," said Chen Haibo, founder and CEO of DeepBlue.

Chen explained that intelligent cleaning will develop rapidly in the post-pandemic era. More functions will be applied at hotels that provide better services, including the delivery of meals and products by robots to create a contactless service environment.

"The safer and more efficient method of combining human and AI service will be the ideal state of hotel development in the future under the normalization of pandemic prevention and control,"Chen said.

"We will gradually implement intelligent products in hotels, making intelligence and technology an effective tool to improve the competitiveness of the hotel industry," he added.

Smart hotels, hotel furniture and supplies, pandemic prevention, property management, self-service, commercial design and other hotel and commercial operations were on display in the exhibition.

Dai Bin, president of the China Tourism Academy, said consumers have formed a habit of short-distance leisure travel after more than a year since the outbreak.

"More and more people have come to realize that a staycation for local history and culture is a good option if they cannot hit the beaches in Phuket," he said.