New Hotels with New Features Opeing in Beijing

The 2008 Olympic Games is giving people around the world a great opportunity to get to know more about China’s capital, but it is also energizing a massive expansion and reconfiguration of the municipality’s entire hospitality industry, especially its high-end hotels. During this crucial year, 354 new hotels will be opened to serve for guests from around the globe for business, tourism and especially the Games. These new hotels will provide more than 80,000 guest rooms, but these rooms will also offer some unexpected new features.

 

Crowne Plaza Sun Palace Beijing: The Appeals of Yunnan

 

The Crowne Plaza Sun Palace Beijing is the latest international brand hotel in the rapidly developing Taiyanggong area in Beijing. The 25-storey landmark tower features 540 well-designed, spacious and technologically savvy rooms and suites with 50 spacious and elegantly appointed suites, including a 300-square-metre Presidential Suite. Rooms come with a private and secure VIP elevator. Combined with a choice of innovative restaurants and bars, the hotel stands out with its comprehensive facilities and services catering to small, medium and larger size meetings, conferences and social events.

 

The Crowne Plaza Sun Palace Beijing is distinctively different from other five-star hotels in Beijing, because of its Yunnan-like ambience and appeal. With scenery replicating the stunning mountains and gorges of Yunnan, rain forests and local architecture known as Diaojiao Lou, this hotel will offer a truly different experience to guests used to the customary Beijing hotel. Every guest will get a strong impression of the wonderful culture of Yunnan, including the use of Yunnan chinaware, carvings, bronze and mushrooms. There will also be special galleries with paintings by Yunnan artists that depict their beautiful province.

 

Guests can also enjoy daily menus fresh from the market and extensive Pan-Asian and western delights from the interactive open-kitchen buffet all day long in the hotel’s Rainbow restaurant that continues the Yunnan theme. Indulge in a feast of authentic and aromatic Yunnanese cuisine and enjoy its ethnic and culinary mystery and diversity. Try the legendary Noodles over the Bridge.

 

Gehua New Century Hotel Beijing, First Media-Themed Hotel in Beijing

 

Ideally located in the heart of Beijing’s Olympic Park and the business district at the North Third Ring Road, most of the Gehua New Century Hotel Beijing’s 353 guest rooms command spectacular views of the iconic Olympic “Bird’s Nest” and the landmark “Water Cube.” The hotel has been appointed as the International Media Center for the 2008 Olympic Games, serving more than 25,000 non-accredited journalists from around the globe. According to Gan Shenghong, the hotel’s general manager, they will retain the hotel’s unique media-oriented features after the Games, making it the first media-themed hotel in Beijing, while providing media-friendly facilities and services. This cultural and media theme is best reflected in the hotel’s Sunshine Bar and International Media Hall.

 

The Sunshine Bar is a media-club bar decked in a fashionable and charming style. An ideal place to unwind and relax with a selection of pastries, snacks and cocktails with cool chocolate martinis, nightly live-music can be expected: even Perking Opera! A selection of exquisite matured cigars and plenty of premium wines and whiskey are enjoyable for media friends to gather together. A Cultural Corridor will be connected to the bar where art exhibitions and speeches will be held to add to the cultural atmosphere of the whole hotel.

The hotel also takes pride in its 1,200-sqaure-metre International Media Hall with a height of 5.85 meters and with additional foyer space of 300 square metres, a size the city seldom sees. A wide range of high-end communications equipment and the latest high-tech facilities meet every requirement for press releases and meetings.

 

The Gehua New Century Hotel Beijing is the first hotel the New Century Tourism Group funded in Beijing. Entering the hospitality industry in Hangzhou in 1988, the group has 23 branch hotels across the country. “This strengthens our confidence for the tough task of serving the Games,” Gan said, “even though the hotel won’t be soft-opened until mid-March, we shall receive full support from our sister hotels, from materials to staff members.” When asked why the group’s next development plan involves a move from South China to Beijing, Gan said that with Beijing being the centre of the country’s finance and politics, it is impossible for the group to become an international enterprise without a presence in Beijing. “We will open two hotels in Beijing this year, another in Xuanwu District,” said Gan. “ We expect that by 2010 the group will have 35 hotels with more than 10,000 guest rooms, which will rank the group among the world’s top-100 hotel management groups.”

 

Courtyard by Marriott Beijing Northeast, Refreshing and Contemporary Living for the Business Travellers

 

Well positioned between the Lido Commercial District and Wangjing High Tech Park, Courtyard by Marriott Beijing Northeast offers close proximity to a host of sites including the National Stadium (the Olympic stadium), the 798 Art District, China International Exhibition Centre, Central Business District, Sanlitun embassy area and numerous Fortune 500 companies. 

 

With 258 innovative and contemporary-styled guest rooms, including a Marriott Suite, Junior Suites, Deluxe rooms and Executive Floor accommodations, each guest room features floor-to-ceiling windows offering a panoramic view of the urban landscape. Equipped with high speed Internet access, large well-lit work desks, ergonomic chairs, flat screen televisions, laptop-size safes and advanced IP phones, each guest’s room will also have Marriott’s highly-acclaimed “Revive” bedding with 300-thread-count, cotton-rich, white top and fitted bottom sheets.

 

In enhancing its business traveller’s needs, Courtyard by Marriott Beijing Northeast offers a variety of amenities such as 24-hour Business and Fitness centres, all day in-room dining, gift shop, whirlpool and wireless Internet connectivity throughout the public area. The hotel also features a well-designed indoor swimming pool with large round ceiling windows allowing abundant sunlight to the welcoming retreat.

 

For dining and entertainment, Courtyard by Marriott Beijing Northeast offers a creative and refreshing dining option in its MoMo Café: a contemporary, warm and vibrant restaurant that is the centre of activity in the hotel. MoMo Café serves many international and local favourites in its bustling and engaging open kitchen, which has a wood-fired oven. The restaurant is divided into separate zones of different ambience from a subtle reading corner to a vibrant, long settee. For those seeking a place to work and dine, MoMo Café features three private rooms, each equipped with a 42” flat-screen television for business presentations or entertainment, while busy diners enjoy a hearty meal.

 

The Lounge offers a complementary indoor and outdoor venue for those looking for an ideal place to unwind and savour a great selection of fine wines and classical cocktails. Featuring a unique urban style “Outdoor Living Room” furnished with large comfortable couches and soft cushions amidst luscious green plants, the Outdoor Living Room is a perfect venue for outdoor gatherings and parties. The indoor lounge area offers a daily live grand piano-played performance in a relaxing and cosy environment.

 

For conferences and social events, the hotel offers six multifunctional function rooms with a total of 580 square metres of space. All the function rooms are bathed in natural light with great views of the lake and courtyards located at the back of the hotel. The outdoor space by the lake is an ideal venue for wedding banquets, ceremonies or parties.

 

“Our Courtyard guests are balancers—a new hybrid of achievement and enjoyment travellers who actively manage the demands of their business life with their demands for personal time. They are highly engaged and use all aspects of a hotel in their pursuit of a balance life while engaged in business or leisure travel,” said Ed Fuller, Marriott’s International Lodging president and managing director.

 

Aloft Beijing, “Sassy Savy Space” for the Young

 

Imagine arriving at an upscale Beijing hotel where you will sleep for the night and discovering that things are beyond your ordinary travel or hotel experience. There is no doorman or valet service to encumber your entry. Upon entering the lobby, there are stylish couches comfortably positioned. And there is a pool table, surrounded by players and observers. Continue your exploration, and you will find an open bar and an area off to the side, stocked with cold and hot beverages, fruit and snacks where you are free to pick up anything to curb your pangs of thirst and hunger. The music you hear in the background is not your common classical or remixed muzak, but new wave sounds by up-and-coming world artists. Once you get to the centre of the lobby, you will find the information island where the first greeting you hear is “aloha.” 

 

This is not a dream, nor has Beijing gone Hawaiian; it simply means that Starwood Hotels, an American firm, has created a brand new hotel concept in their newest brand, aloft. Beijing, being a world-class city with extraordinary growth and energy, much like what aloft represents, has been chosen by Starwood to be inaugural city for its launch of its first aloft hotel in the world. It is targeted to open by the 2008 Games, located in Haidian District, near the Yansha Jinyuan Shopping Complex.

 

“Our mission with aloft is to bring style, convenience and a social environment to an otherwise tired, lonely experience, all at a great price,” said Brian McGuinness, vice-president of aloft and element hotels. “Sassy Savvy Space” is what the aloft staff calls their establishment. aloft has worked with contemporary designers, such as David Rockwell, to customize features that will stimulate a guest’s senses, offering atmospheric public spaces designed to draw guests from their rooms to socialize and make friends.

 

Guests can read the paper, work on their laptops via hotel-wide wireless Internet access, play a game of pool or grab a drink with friends at the “re:mix” communal lobby area and bar “w xyz.” The “re:charge” fitness centre and “splash,” the indoor pool, give travellers options to relax and re-energize. “re:fuel” by aloft, is a one-stop food and beverage area, offering sweet, savoury and healthy food, snacks and beverages for guests to grab and go, 24-hours a day.

 

Everything about aloft has been created, maximized and minimized to be more in tune with how their guests want to feel when they travel. aloft wants to ensure that their guests have a good experience in Beijing, including their hotel stay.