Hotels in China have hit the jackpot during the Labour Day holiday with a huge surge in post-pandemic demand allowing them to raise their room prices more than tenfold in some cases.
Such is the wave of pent-up demand that some hotels have had to hire part-time workers to meet the needs of vast numbers of tourists after three years of travel curbs to fend off the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Soaring hotel room prices had been expected by tourists, but the hefty price increase still turned out to be a nasty surprise [to them],” said Franco Feng, chief executive of Shanghai-based travel services firm Shenxiaokou.
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“In some areas, tourists are complaining about the quality of service even after they paid a large sum of money because hotels and inns lack staff to clean up rooms or serve food.”
According to the Guangzhou-based Yangcheng Evening News, some hotels in Yangshuo, a resort town in southwest China’s Guangxi province, charged guests prices more than 16 times its normal rates on April 30 as travel demand peaked.
In Shanghai, the Post found hotel room prices were at least twice their normal rates during the five-day break that started on April 29.
The inflated room rates were enough to put some would-be tourists off travelling at all.
One, surnamed Zhao, in Shanghai said she decided to postpone her trip to southwestern China’s Chongqing city until after the festive period because the hotel prices were “ridiculous”.
Hotels were among the main victims of mainland China’s stringent pandemic curbs, in place since early 2020.
The domestic tourism sector, with a market size of about US$1 trillion, was once an important driver of economic growth. The industry employs at least 30 million people, according to an estimate by the China National Tourism Administration in 2017.
The travel boom in the Labour Day holiday period, also referred to as May Day and “golden week”, comes after Beijing abandoned its zero-Covid strategy in December.
But the windfall sparked by China’s reopening may be just a short-term phenomenon, rather than the prelude to a long-term recovery, according to some analysts.
“The hospitality sector is not an easy business,” said Zhou Tao, head of hotels and hospitality at property services firm JLL. “Landlords, hotel brands and industry employees have to have the wisdom to pave a way for the industry’s further growth.”
Catherine Scown, vice-president of sales and hotel marketing for Asia-Pacific at Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, said bookings from Chinese travellers for the May Day holiday were rapidly building up across all seven of its properties in China.
“Some of our properties are already seeing occupancies of above 80 per cent for the holidays, with one of them at full occupancy,” she said. “Demand for suites is also stronger for the golden week as travellers splurge on higher-end experiences, continuing a trend that we have been seeing throughout the first quarter of 2023.”
The Four Seasons Hotel in Hangzhou, which sits next to the West Lake and offers ecotourism programmes for families, is almost fully booked for the five-day holiday despite nearly doubling its room rates. Its suites start from 8,600 yuan (US$1,243) per night, instead of the normal rate of 4,700 yuan, according to booking platform Dianping.
Scown said “all signs point to 2023 being one of our strongest ever golden weeks.” Overseas flights are not yet back to 2019 levels, limiting the opportunities for international travel, which in turn has boosted domestic travel, she added.
Similarly, Mandarin Oriental in Sanya, a resort in the southern province of Hainan dubbed China’s Hawaii, believes this year’s golden week will help boost sales.
“The Labour Day holiday is a high season for Sanya, especially for this year as guests are more willing to travel after the lockdown,” said Donna Jiang, director of communications at Mandarin Oriental Sanya. “We predict that both the occupancy rate and average daily rate in our hotel in Sanya will be higher than those of last year.”
After three years of subdued business, hotels were striving to hire more skilled workers as the industry recovers, said Jackey Yu, a partner with global consultancy McKinsey.
“For the unseasoned staff they hired recently, it takes time to train them before they can be fully prepared for a business boom,” he added.
In Pudong, Shanghai, a hotel with 500 rooms hired several part-time workers for housekeeping roles, paying them 17 yuan per room during the holiday, a makeshift measure to overcome the labour shortage.
They can manage about 20 rooms a day, meaning they can take home more than 300 yuan, some 60 per cent more than the average worker.
However, the work is not without its pitfalls.
“We are not skillful and are often criticised for failing to meet the standards of the work,” said Yin Xiaohong, one of the newly hired cleaning staff. “It is hard-earned money.”
More from South China Morning Post:
- Hainan, ‘China’s Hawaii’, rolls out events and coupons to catch domestic travel boom during Labour Day holiday
- 110,000 mainland Chinese tourists leave Hong Kong on first day of ‘golden week’; day trippers cite hotel prices, benefits of high-speed rail link for short stays
- Hong Kong gears up for expected 600,000 mainland Chinese visitors for Labour Day ‘golden week’ but hotels, restaurants fret about manpower
- Hong Kong hotel property buying spree looms as investors bet on tourism rebound, analysts say
- More than 310,000 visitors arrive in Hong Kong to eat, shop and play as Labour Day ‘golden week’ holiday begins
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