| Hotel group is a sort of economic conglomerate that is formed by a number of hotels through capital combination and business cooperation on the basis of a highly developed hotel industry. The consolidation of enterprises has become an increasing trend of the hotel industry worldwide in 1990s. After half a century's historical development, a large number of international hotel groups have entered a golden era of mature development in terms of market expansion and modes of operation. These well-developed giants are expanding in the Asia-Pacific region rapidly, especially in China. Since China adopted the reform and opening policy more than 20 years ago, China's hotel industry has rapidly developed into a significant size. In recent years, the problems in the industry, such as the minus profit rate in the entire industry and the lack of competitiveness of most state-owned hotels, are becoming increasingly severe. Such miserable situation is largely attributed to the oversupply, vicious competition and individual operation of hotel properties. Moreover, China's entry of World Trade Organization will also seriously challenge the state-owned hotels, which will no longer be protected by the government. Currently, China's hotel industry needs urgently to reform the organizational structure of hotel enterprises and find feasible solutions for the consolidation of the industry. This thesis, by analyzing the development of hotel consolidation from the economic point of view, compares the historical development and characteristics of the European and US hotels with those of the Chinese properties, and accordingly, provides some suggestions as the proposed strategies to the development of China's hotel groups. This thesis defines the concept of hotel and hotel group by first introducing the causes and concept of enterprise conglomerate. The hotel group, as a form of enterprise conglomerate, has its own characteristics of the enterprises in the service industry. This part analyzes the nature of hotel product, which differs from that of manufacturing industry, and points out the advantages of the development of hotel consolidation on the basis of the analysis. The effect of the characteristics of hotel product on the consolidation pattern is also discussed. The chapter then analyzes the inevitability of the formation and development of hotel groups, as well as the advantages of their operation. Secondly, this thesis mainly presents the historical development and current situations of the European and US hotel groups. After over 50 years of development, world-famous international hotel groups have created successful modes of consolidation development in the industry. Having absorbed the experience from enterprise conglomerates in manufacturing industry, they are further utilizing the intangible assets such as brand, management and human resources to expand with an astonishingly high speed and rather low costs. The operational characteristics of the world- famous hotel groups provide the advanced experience and future goal for the Chinese hotel groups. After that, this thesis briefly introduces the historical development and characteristics of China's hotel industry, i.e., the high-speed development and government intervention. It also describes the current situation of China's hotel industry in different aspects, such as the pace of development, economic types, structure of the industry, geographic distribution., star-rating and functions in details, and points out that China's hotel industry is facing serious challenges. The development and characteristics of China's hotel groups are mainly discussed in this chapter. From the beginning of formation, China's hotel groups participated in international competition due to the penetration of international hotel groups, and keep being challenged by their foreign counterparts. The development strategy of China's hotel groups is still government-led consolidation, which is closely related to the current situation of the devel... |
PDF Full Text Request