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Chinese Hotel Branding: An Emerging Research Agenda

The global tourism market place has witnessed the rise of China as one of the most vibrant places of the World’s tourist traffic in modern history. In 2012, China became the largest source market with over 83 million outbound tourists to other countries/regions. In the same year, it received 137 million inbound visitors in addition to 2.96 billion domestic tourists. The booming tourist activities have engendered the rapid growth and diversity of the country’s hotel sector with an increasing variety of brand choices for the traveling consumers. There are chained hotel brands versus independent hotel brands, foreign hotel brands versus domestic hotel brands, and everything in between, ranging from luxury hotels to hostels, in various ownership structures including stateand foreign-owned, and joint-ventures. The supply side of the hotel market is characterized by fierce brand competition at both strategic and tactical levels. The demand side grows not only in size but also in sophistication. The traveling consumers, particularly Chinese tourists, are becoming increasingly experienced, savvy, knowledgeable in their brand choices, and demanding in their expectations of brand delivery. Brand has been advocated as a powerful tool for both the supply and demand sides in the marketplace. Hotel companies use brands to gain competitive advantage; and consumers heavily rely on brands to make purchase decisions. Born in full recognition of the importance of brands for the development and management of China’s hotel sector, this special issue collects articles that address the theme from the perspectives of both demand side (consumers) and supply side (hotel companies). In the contribution entitled “An empirical study of customer-based brand equity model for China economy hotels”, Shen, Yuan, Zhang, and Zhao empirically examine Aaker’s (1991) conceptual framework of brand equity in the context of China’s economy hotels. They identify Chinese consumers’ brand associations with the economy hotels owned by domestic corporations and offer a framework to understand the constructs of building and managing the brand equity for economy hotel brands in China. China domestic brands occupy over 60% of the market share in the economy hotel segment in China. The findings of this study provide important managerial implications for brand development and management in China’s economy hotel sector. The number of luxury hotels has grown five times in the last decade in China, which has been dominated mainly by multinational brands. The article by Hsu entitled “Brand evaluation of foreign vs. domestic luxury hotels by Chinese travelers”, examines the perceived brand performance of foreign and domestic luxury hotel brands among Chinese domestic consumers. She finds that Chinese domestic consumers do not differ in their evaluation and satisfaction between foreign and domestic luxury hotel brands. This key finding is significant as it contradicts the existing understanding that consumers in emerging markets tend to rate foreign brands more favorably than domestic ones. Journal of China Tourism Research, 10: 1–3, 2014 Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 1938-8160 print / 1938-8179 online DOI: 10.1080/19388160.2014.876704