TOP Hoteliers was the first recruitment and executive search firm to open offices in the People's Republic of China. serving the hospitality industry exclusively  We combine worldwide, international industry knowledge with in-depth understanding of the Greater China Hospitality market to find and recruit quality candidates for all key positions. Our company has earned a reputation for successful placement of talented hospitality executives in a broad range of senior-level and management roles within nearly all international hotel management companies and respected local hotel management companies active in the region, as well as other leading restaurant management companies and other hospitality oriented companies.

Located in Hong Kong, Shenzhen and Beijing we are close to our clients and are familiar with their operations, location and style.

Our consultants all come with a hospitality based education, work experience and service attitude background.

Please explore our site to learn more about our values, our processes, our expertise, and what we can offer to you.

Yours sincerely,

  René J.M. Schillings MA Bha  
Managing Director  

TOP Hoteliers December Newsletter.

Further reading on the topics in our newsletter

Looking forward to a robust 2010

2009 is coming to an end. The year started with a severe hangover from the worldwide financial crisis that saw the second half of 2008 create a lot of turmoil in the industry. At the start of 2009 hotels were empty and hiring frozen. Around February/March when in China a lot of employment contracts start (and end) many hoteliers still found their contracts not renewed and faced lay off. But that was, for China and recruitment for hotels the end of the crisis already. Directly after Chinese New Year, which ended early this year by February 1, we saw that life goes on and hotels need to be staffed. Most urgent then were the many Sales & Marketing positions to be filled as hotels realized that this year would be a battle for the little business that is out there. After the summer holidays hotel managers started to realize that vital positions had been kept open for too long and hiring for essential department heads and expatriates was back on our plate again.

Due to our many site-visits to various cities in China we could not help seeing that occupancies were up, especially in the secondary cities, but that overall room rates were still under pressure. The rates were under pressure not so much because there was no money, but because consumers got smart and knew they could make a deal, and in the case of Beijing a certain overcapacity that led to cut-throat competition. Those hotels that panicked in the crisis and slashed rates to create occupancy dragged the whole city down. But overall the hotel companies are now already looking to 2010 and beyond. Staffing needs are more driven by occupancy than by actual revenue, although with revised budgets perhaps. New hotels are still opening every month in China, and worldwide there is a general consensus that the worse is over, and that the global economy is getting back on its feet again. In some places that may go very slow, but everybody in the world is watching China as one of the leading nations to recover from this crisis and lead the world out of recession.

That China is a growing destination for business and leisure travel is a trend set already for decades and this crisis was just a short interruption. American Express Business Travel recently announced the findings of two surveys which offered separate yet similar predictions on the health and future of business travel heading into 2010. The company surveyed its Global Business Partnership (GBP) clients, its largest global clients, as well as 180 client organizations based across Shanghai, Beijing, and Guangzhou in China through its annual China Business Travel Survey (The Barometer). The findings indicate that clients expect China will lead business travel recovery. Further, investment by global companies and local companies in China should increase over the next 12 months. That is good news for hotels in China and the hoteliers that (want to) work for them

Investment in Human Capital as China's hotel boom continues

In November an International Hotel Investment Summit was organized by Asia Hotel Forum at the Westin Chaoyang in Beijing. Attendants were mostly hotel owners, or aspiring hotel owners looking for directions where and how to invest their money, and if owning a hotel would be a good investment. Also represented were of course the major hotel management companies active in China, sending their senior representatives to explain to the public why investing in hotels still has a good long term future. Further attendants and exhibitors were various architecture, construction and hotel supplies companies, most of them targeting potential business from hotel currently under construction, or yet to be build. On behalf of TOP Hoteliers, Managing Director René J.M. Schillings was also present and invited as a key speaker on the topic of managing all these hotels, yet to be built, with capable managers as part of the investment..

His message towards the hotel owners present was perhaps one with a difference;”In China it’s not a challenge to build more hotels. Land, location, capital are available. Building a hotel is just a matter of putting bricks and stones together, and in China there are some stunning examples of grand and glorious hotel projects coming up everywhere”. And although most hotel owners and managers spoke about potential difficulties of filling the hotels with guests and thus fearing competition impacting on occupancy rates and high room rates and/or RevPar, and ultimately profit and return on investment, few hotel owners and hotel management companies realized that in order to operate the hotel, and make this investment work, as a going concern and running business, you need the capable people to do this. Much talk was about last year, this year, next year performances of hotels, but whichever hotel is opened last year, this year or next year, it will be operating for the next odd 30 years as a hotel. And it will need staff as long as it is a functioning hotel. With more and more hotels coming in China they will not only be competing for market share, they will also find themselves in competition for the talents in a tight market.

Owners influence on hotel management in China

It’s not unique to China that most hotels are owned by companies that do not operate these hotels and/or do not have the specific experience and know-how how to professionally manage a hotel operation. For this, more and more hotel owners sign up management contracts with established hotel management companies, be they international or domestic, long time in China or new comers. When we, TOP Hoteliers, recruit for a hotel in China, both internationally managed, or local managed, we consider the details about the ownership, the ownership involvement and the owner’s history and experience

What is unique to China is that the average hotel owner in China is a relatively newcomer to investment in long term projects such as a hotel. Originally, since the founding of the People’s Republic of China all hotels, hostels, guest state houses and so on were owned by the Government. Most of the hotels that date from this area were often build for political reasons, special events, or to boost regions. This is almost a closed chapter in China, but it’s the same government bodies that still control large assets of hotel properties, even when the old state-owned hotel disappeared and a new glitzy international managed hotel rose up in its place. The first international hotel companies that entered China in the early and mid-80’s were still joint-ventures with mostly all-powerful Municipal Governments and Ministries, and even China’s state monopolies such as Oil, Banks, Railways, yes even The People’s Liberation Army owned most of these hotels. In the 1990’s when private entrepreneurs started building their emporiums, these assets from the government were largely privatized/ bought up, and of course due to available land and capital, new projects were developed. Today the hotel owners in China can be described as either self-made billionaires who made their fortunes with real-estate, manufacturing or trade, or semi-privatized consortiums, cut loose from the old state-owned enterprises but run by a board of directors, acting like a cooperative. In all these cases, their choice to invest and own a hotel is not driven by a desire to operate the perfect hotel, but to make a return on investment, for ulterior reasons. A very popular reason to put up a hotel in China is the mixed-use development where a whole area or complex is built up, including offices, housing, shopping malls, leisure park, and to add value and prestige, a hotel is fitted in, almost as an afterthought. And there are those projects in China were hotels are purely built as part of a prestige project, to show off wealth, power, or the economic development of a certain region. Feasibility study is only a marginal part of such decision to build a hotel. The choice of a particular brand is often more a ‘fashion’ statement than a concise choice for this operator or that, based on proven results. This approach quite often clashes with the mindset of professional hoteliers, who often are trained to manage hotels in operational excellence, according to brand identity and with focus on guest experience, and in case of expatriates have learned to do so everywhere in the world. They come to China with the idea that they must make this hotel excellent, ‘as they know it’, even though their idea of an excellent hotel clashes with what owners want. Many a hotel manager came to China enthusiastically and left frustrated. The opening of more hotels and new brands arriving is a dream for every international hotelier, in terms of hardware, facilities, scale and bringing new things to a virgin market. There are few places in the world where hotels are built bigger, faster, and with more marble and gold than in China. And the hotel companies often have no other choice than to pick up these projects, before somebody else does. With this mindset, operational issues are easily overlooked. And then the hoteliers come in, and are faced with impossible tasks. China is an intensive country to work in, and often underestimated by new comers, but appreciated by those who learn the ropes and see the reality for what it is. This is also the reality that TOP Hoteliers, as an executive search firm for many of these hotels works with. Regardless of brand, size of the project and ambitions of the owners one must understand the reality behind the reason why this hotel is here, and who are the ultimate decision makers. General Managers and other Department Heads may come and go. Even Hotel management companies may come and go. But the hotel property will be there, for years to come, and it needs to be managed by somebody. And that is for the owners to decide.

As we are in contact with many hotel managers all over China we often hear about their frustrations with the owners. How they involve and mingle into affairs that in other countries an owner wouldn’t bother with. This is partially to be explained by culture and historic development. The Chinese hotel owners came to be hotel owners because they were either all-powerful multi-layer government bodies where everything was decided in consensus and by political motives, or they were self-made man, or women who made smart and un-opinioned decisions and grew rich very fast, doing things nobody had done before and by following their gut feelings, not the advise of others. Therefore, knowing a bit about the owning company of a hotel is as important as knowing the brand, the salary, the location if you are considering a next move. Like in every market there are upcoming and stagnant companies, advanced ones and conservative ones. There are owning companies with endless resources and some with limited resources. The amount of cash poured into the construction of the hotel is no measure as to how deep their pockets will be to run the hotel with long term vision and maintaining standards even when business is not as good as expected. China is the new frontier, with its opportunities and its pitfalls.

The main difference between China’s hotel owners and owners in other parts of the world has been largely explained in the above. Another factor is also that for most of these hotel owners this is a first time into getting a peek into how a hotel is run. By now they surely have been to other 5* international hotels, and have often traveled all over the world and seen the flagships of the various hotel companies before they ‘pick their brand’, but that does not yet equal to understanding how hotel managers thick and define a good hotel. Compared to more developed markets, like South-East Asia, even the Middle East, this boom in hotel ownership has happened much later. The more established hotel owning companies in South East Asia, including China’s Hong Kong often have already a history of 20 – 30 years, and have already gone through these motions. These hotel owners have eventually learned to step back from day-to-day interference with the daily operations and purely look at (financial) results. Also, in these countries a second and third generation of hotel owners is gradually coming to the board (table), with different ideas about letting the hotel managers run the hotel and enjoy the benefits of a well-managed hotel that bring return on investment. In China this second generation is yet to come out from the shadow of the first generation. As everything, time will bring gradual changes to China, but China seldom changes because the (foreign) management companies say so. The foreigners, i.e. the expatriate managers, the hotel management companies as well as guests, investors, suppliers and consulting companies have to change to fit the particular market situation and demands in China.