Bernardo Cabot first arrived in Shanghai in 2010 when he was sent by the Spanish hotel group, Melia Hotels International, to establish a presence in the Chinese market. The city was hosting the World Expo and the senior hotelier sensed the direction of the country’s development.
“China knew very well what it wanted to be – more international, more open, more potentials for local companies, as well as foreign ones,” says Cabot, the group’s senior vice-president for the Asia-Pacific region.
“But at that time what I felt was an intention, and what I saw was a vision.”
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Bernardo Cabot, senior vice-president for Asia-Pacific for Spanish hotel group Melia. Provided to China Daily |
The expo lasted for six months, during which most of the high-end hotels in Shanghai were occupied by visitors and tourists, but Melia, Spain’s largest hotel group, were still initiating their first activities in the country by then.
Eight years later, Shanghai has once again hosted a grand expo – the China International Import Expo – and this time, Melia didn’t miss the opportunity.
Its hotel nearby the expo venue in Hongqiao was booked for the entire week when the event took place in November. The Melia Shanghai Hongqiao is the group’s fourth hotel that Cabot has helped open in China, following earlier ones in Xi’an, Jinan and Zhengzhou.
“This time, what I felt at the trade show was a reality, and the commitment of the Chinese government to this path,” Cabot says, sitting at his regional headquarters in Shanghai’s Lujiazui financial area.
Having worked in the group for 28 years, Cabot has managed hotels across three continents. He says the group sees China as essential to its growth in the Asia-Pacific region and three more hotels will be open in the country next year.
Foreign hotels trying to make inroads into China, however, face challenges, as the high-end hotel niche is saturated in first-tier cities, and international big names are facing more local competition.
Cabot thinks differentiation is the key. “We cannot compete in quantity, but in quality,” he says, adding that each individual hotel brand has a unique selling point and target customers.
The first Melia hotel opened in Jinan, Shandong province, located near the city’s new high-speed railway station.
“The hotel is strategic, as it’s between Beijing and Shanghai on the high-speed rail line,” he says.
“In China, the high-speed train is changing the way people are traveling, and subsequently everything related to the surroundings of the stations will become more and more important.”
The Gran Melia in Xi’an, on the other hand, takes customers to the culturally rich area of the ancient capital of China in Shaanxi province, where the hotel is close to the Big Wild Goose Pagoda, a UNESCO world heritage site, and the Tang Paradise, a royal-garden park of the Tang Dynasty (618-907).
Other Melia hotels scheduled to open next year include one near Shanghai Disneyland Park and one in Chongqing, a city known for its leisurely lifestyle.
“We want to provide customers with unique Spanish features,” he says, such as a welcoming and passionate staff and delicious Spanish tapas.
But it’s not all about just being different, Cabot says: “We operate in China, so we have to be Chinese.”
That explains the hotel company’s approach to hiring Chinese professionals on its management teams, partnering with Chinese booking agencies, marketing on Chinese social networks and accepting popular mobile payments.
The 54-year-old Cabot has two daughters who grew up in Shanghai, and he adopted a Chinese boy in 2013.
“Now I am an ambassador of China whenever I’m traveling around the world,” Cabot says. “When people ask me about China, I tell them that everything goes very fast, because there’s a clear direction. And when something works well, the market is huge.”
Looking back, Cabot says the Shanghai he knew in 2010 and the city one sees today are totally different.
And for the hospitality industry, the government’s investment in infrastructure – the high-speed railways, roads and airports – has been amazing, he says.
“What gives us a lot of comfort is whatever is announced that will happen always happens,” he says.
(China Daily European Weekly 12/21/2018 page31)