on as worldwide demand for its exports falls. Nevertheless, it is still expanding at about 7.5 per cent a year, a rate western countries can only envy. Even discounting the interests
western companies now have there, the next few decades will see greater ties between China and the outside world as demand for western goods from China’s increasingly affluent population grows. Its 1.3 billion people now includes a middle class that outweighs the whole of the US, as well as around 600 dollar billionaires, so there will be more of a two-way flow of goods, services and business travel. According to the US-based Global Business Travel Association, the
corporate travel market to China will outstrip that of the US in 2013. The organisation estimates business travel spending in China increased by 17 per cent in 2012 and will go up by 21 per cent in 2013 – from US$202 billion to US$245 billion. Spend in the US is expected to reach only US$233 billion in 2013. All this has not gone unnoticed in the UK, but China has a smaller profile in travel terms than it deserves. Thanks to the absence of slots at Heathrow, direct air connections are limited to Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong and, only since last year, Guangzhou. This is all the more astonishing
when you consider that, according to Wendy Huang, Starwood’s vice-president for China, the
country has 170 cities with populations above one million. Management consultancy McKinsey estimates China will have 221 cities with more than a million people by 2025, compared with only 35 in Europe today. The hotel sector has been quick to
capitalise. US forecasting company Lodging Econometrics estimates that following a building boom in 2011, when almost 450 properties were constructed, China led the world in hotel openings. Lodging Econometrics forecasts another 290 by the end of 2012, compared with only 91 in India, the world’s other economic hotspot. Many of these will be in cities
less than familiar to UK buyers. Here, we feature some that will soon have a higher profile.