In light of China’s recent opening up, tourism in the country is on the up again. What’s more, when China reopens visa applications for tourists, international visitors will begin returning to the Middle Kingdom. This is all good news for the hotel industry and we sat down with Coco Li, the hotel manager of InterContinental Shenzhen just after the establishment had three consecutive days running at 100% capacity. 

For readers that don’t know, can you tell us what you do at Intercontinental Shenzhen?

I have been in the hotel industry for 19 years, and I joined InterContinental Shenzhen when it opened 16 years ago. The position is constantly changing, and I have accumulated a lot of rich experience, especially in the past two years as the hotel’s manager.

Recently, I led the renovation of the children's swimming pool and the preparation of the central laundry room. Previously, I also led the Renovation of Joy Kids Utopia, a 5000 square meter parent-child indoor and outdoor projects and parent-child restaurants, revitalized some inefficient assets and brought growth and efficiency to the enterprise.

Personally, I feel very fulfilled. The atmosphere in our hotel is very good, and the team has a high degree of cooperation.

What is your understanding of InterContinental Shenzhen's positioning in the Shenzhen market? 

The vision of our hotel is Shenzhen's leading luxury urban resort hotel.

Our hotel customer base is divided into three categories: business, MICE, and family.

These three types of guests require different services and products. First of all, business guests seldom stay in the hotel during the day. What they care most about is the hotel room experience, the speed of WIFI and the quality of breakfast. We ensure that the office in the room is more comfortable, we replaced the office chair in the room with an ergonomic chair and we have separate showers and bathtubs. As for the beds, we changed the Serta mattress and bedding to goose down quilts to enhance the sleeping experience.

For entertainment, we replaced the 55-inch TV and added functions such as IPTV TV, so guests can order movies and food at any time.

To improve our hotel's breakfast, we conducted research and analysis on all guests, and adjust the breakfast variety every quarter, replacing some seasonal ingredients and signature snacks with local Guangdong characteristics.

The hotel has nine banquet halls, one of which is a column-free grand banquet hall. The Leah Banquet Hall has a separate banquet west aisle, providing tea break services with various themes for wedding guests.

We are the most advantageous hotel; we have indoor and outdoor wedding venues for guests to choose from and a third-party wedding center. We can also provide a one-stop wedding service, with everything from photoshoots to photography and the wedding ceremony.

Intercontinental Shenzhen is one of the best parent-child resort hotels in the market. How do you continue to attract customers? What parent-child facilities are there in your hotel?

We create an immersive parent-child experience; all entire children's facilities can be used by children aged 2-12.

On the hotel grounds, we have just established Joy Kids Utopia, a 5,000 square meter indoor and outdoor children's playground, carousel, maze garden, Monternet jungle, star and moon house, and children's restaurant.

There is also a full set of children's activities, such as handicraft workshops, baking, starlight parties, drama performances, story books and other parent-child interactive activities.

The outdoor beach, with real sand and a swimming pool, children's water park, train ride, bubble show, and other parent-child facilities are great during the summer months.

In this highly competitive market, what do you think is the competitive advantage of Intercontinental Shenzhen?

It is definitely our facilities and products: we are the only hotel in Shenzhen that can adapt for business, family transient markets and tourists all year round. 

For example, all guest rooms in the hotel have balconies, the coverage rate of green plants reaches 85% and the room area is large; it is one of the best choices for wedding banquet venues with our 1500 square meter pillar-free Espana Ballroom.

Our credibility speaks for itself, we have a score of 4.8 on Ctrip and perform really well on other platforms too. 

The brand is also willing to spend money on continuous innovation, we have nearly 40 million CAPEX every year. This investment provides a guarantee of quality, cross-border cooperation and attracts different customer groups.

Traveling around China and into the country is getting easier and easier. Will you focus more on the international market in the future?

Before the epidemic, 2019 was our best-ever year since we opened. 

Although more people are traveling around China, the international travel market has not recovered significantly, because there are still some restrictions on international travel to China. 

However, things are getting easier and with the recent relaxations on travel between the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong, I believe that the future is bright. 

We are looking at the Labor Day Holiday in May as a significant date and are hoping our foreign markets can return to 70% of pre-pandemic levels by then.

Generally speaking, 2023 is going to be exciting and we are relatively positive and optimistic.