The Post-Pandemic Hotel Playbook

Over the past three years, the pandemic has changed travel consumption most profoundly in terms of consumer habits.

When the pandemic first began, we all thought it would pass quickly and everything would soon return to normal.

But as three years slipped through our fingers, the normalization of the pandemic has driven fundamental—and at times irreversible—shifts in countless consumer habits.

As an observer and participant in the travel industry, I believe that every crisis contains both danger and opportunity. Over these three years, I've been constantly studying and thinking about how to avoid the dangers, seize the opportunities, and even turn threats into advantages.

Take the international brand Four Seasons, which I know well and love, as an example. After the Gulf War broke out in 1991, transatlantic air travel was paralyzed, the U.S. imposed a business ban, and the market faced the constant threat of terrorism. Tourism was dragged to its lowest point in history, leading this always-top-tier hotel brand to suffer plummeting occupancy rates and massive layoffs. Yet at that very moment, Four Seasons did not cut advertising spending; instead, it bought up high-quality, low-cost land and renovated existing properties, leveraging its solid strength to achieve an overall brand upgrade.

All this mirrors today's situation uncannily. Right now, air travel is crippled, global trade is disrupted, and the market could be shut down by the pandemic at any moment—making this truly the lowest ebb for tourism in history. As the pandemic eases worldwide, tourism is gearing up for a comeback. At this juncture of imminent growth and transformation, every post-pandemic move must be carefully calculated; it's a critical and high-stakes game.

Hotel apartments that once catered only to long-stay guests or property owners are now swiftly opening up to short-term visitors. You can find plenty of short-term rental listings for such apartments on Ctrip, with a booking process just like that for hotel rooms: enter your stay dates to view and reserve. Hotels themselves are also promoting special offers for short-stay apartments through their own WeChat Official Accounts.

In the post-pandemic era, most travelers are increasingly inclined to avoid excessive human contact. The social aspect that hotels once prided themselves on is now being downplayed. As "contactless" becomes a basic requirement, short-term rentals in hotel apartments have become especially appealing to guests.

Early this year I traveled to Guangzhou on business. Previously I would have chosen Rosewood Guangzhou, whose elegant and exquisitely designed rooms always made me feel a kind of feminine grace. This time, however, I opted for its Rosewood Residences, intrigued by the fact that they were bookable on Ctrip—I was curious to see what differences there might be.

The residences comprise 355 units, each with a private elevator. When the elevator doors open, you step into a small foyer for your room where you can change shoes. Service staff have a separate side door to deliver newspapers, meals, and other services, all designed to preserve the privacy of your personal space without intrusion.

While the room size is similar to hotel guest rooms, the brighter and more streamlined design creates a greater sense of space visually. Each unit has an open-plan kitchen fully equipped with cookware, and a bathtub comes as standard. What surprised me most was the washing machine, cleverly hidden in a discreet corner without wasting any space. In my opinion, the view through the floor-to-ceiling windows is even better than that from the hotel rooms, because the residences are situated lower down, allowing an eye-level view of the Canton Tower.

All the services you'd find in other hotels are present here, but with a more personalized touch. For example, there's bespoke lobby service, and complimentary breakfast, afternoon tea, and drinks; whenever you're hungry, you can drop by for a snack. The fitness center has a dedicated rest area for apartment guests, and daily activities are offered in the exercise studio, encouraging a healthier lifestyle among residents.

With the promotion of pro-birth policies across the country, family travel is set to become a dominant trend in domestic tourism in the future.

Although the hotel industry's ecosystem has appeared weakened during the pandemic, family-friendly hotels have seen a continuous rise in occupancy rates, especially during holidays or weekends when they are often fully booked.

Let's again use my Guangzhou trip from early this year as an example. At that time, Guangzhou had just been removed from the pandemic travel "star" list for a couple of days, and people cooped up at home were rushing to pack up their families and drive to nearby destinations for a short getaway. Qingyuan, just a one-hour drive from Guangzhou, was the top choice.

For people from outside Guangdong, Qingyuan is mainly known for its Qingyuan chicken, and not much else. But the sister brand of Rosewood, the Qianli Hotel, saw an opportunity in this "backyard of Guangzhou" market and entered the family-friendly business.

First, the area has natural hot springs, providing a foundation for resort and leisure development. The hotel places great emphasis on guests' outdoor experiences, with hot springs, lawns, barbecues, and swimming pools, all aimed at creating more spaces where people can commune with nature.

Second, the hotel has invested heavily in activities: for children, there are a vegetable garden, a toy house, a science lab, a playground, and more; for adults, a board game room, table tennis, archery, yoga, and meditation. This way, while the kids are learning and playing under the care of professional staff, the grown-ups can also savor the slow pace of travel without interruption.

Let's first break down the concept of "minsu" (B&Bs/guesthouses) into a few categories: 1) the Airbnb model of staying in someone else's home; 2) those set in ancient towns and villages that were once inns; 3) influencer-driven guesthouses aimed at capturing young people's attention.

Airbnb's exit from the Chinese market this year is lamentable, but it also shows how the concept of staying in someone else's home has become increasingly hard to popularize in China. Ancient towns and villages primarily attracted the post-80s and post-90s generations; now that the late-90s and post-00s crowd are the main force in the guesthouse market, the overly homogenous ancient towns no longer hold their interest.

With the rise of social media platforms like Douyin (TikTok) and Xiaohongshu (RED), photo ops and check-ins have become essential parts of travel. Thus, influencer-style guesthouses have become a lifeline for the current market. During the entire stay, guests don't need to focus on their own feelings; as long as they can take beautiful photos, post them, and wait for likes, their experience—under the guise of sharing—is often interpreted through others' perspectives.

In April, the pandemic kept me in Yunnan; with no flights available to return to Beijing, I ended up spending a solid two weeks in Lijiang and Dali.

Over those two weeks, I revisited classic tourist spots like Lijiang's Dayan Ancient Town, Shaxi Ancient Town, and Dali Ancient Town. Each looked much the same—architectural styles are similar, and the merchandise is hardly distinguishable—except that there were far fewer people. No tour groups, and the guesthouses stood virtually empty.

Erhai Lake in Lijiang, however, remained bustling. Whether in the well-known Shuanglang area or the newly developed Haidong, you'd see young men and women in fashionable attire, each seemingly equipped with a photographer and a convertible sports car. Every guesthouse has its own Instagram-worthy spot. At one where I stayed, Tinghua Island, a swing suspended over the water fulfilled the dream of wearing a long white dress for photos; the wait to take a picture was over an hour, and rooms were already booked up for half a month in advance.

Of course, the Erhai of today is no longer the same as it once was. The earlier iteration, which appealed to the post-80s generation, followed a bohemian literary style, retaining elements of local indigenous culture. It was the 'San Mao' types—women in red dresses adorned with jingling jewelry—who first put this place on the map.

Today's Erhai, geared toward the post-00s crowd, goes for a Santorini vibe: uniformly white houses built into the hillside, overflowing with flowers and laid with lawns. As the sun sets, accompanied by the strains of violin music and seagulls taking flight, you could almost mistake it for Greece.

In the newly developed Wenbi Village, I stayed for nearly a week at a guesthouse called Muxinbao. This guesthouse opened during the pandemic, backed by an investment of over ten million yuan, banking on the post-pandemic travel boom. For them, the pandemic represents a good opportunity for renewal and iteration; upgrading both hardware and software, and refining a quality product, is the top priority now.

Wooden tables and chairs, pour-over coffee makers, white canvas tents, string lights shaped like stars, all paired with campfires at sunset—the camping trend that took off at the start of the pandemic in 2020 has only gained momentum, as if every middle-class person harbors a camping dream.

Lakesides, grasslands, deserts, mountain peaks… all these niche, once-undiscovered destinations have become transient bedrooms for campers. The way of falling asleep under the stars and waking up to sunlight releases souls confined by the pandemic back into nature.

While in Lijiang, I visited Baisha Ancient Town. For frequent travelers to Lijiang, it's a relatively new world, not yet commercialized, and its living environment is far better than that of other ancient towns.

Three businesses nearby caught my interest: a hotel, a guesthouse, and a ranch, all centered around camping and the great outdoors.

Overlooking Baisha Ancient Town is the Wuyu Lan Hotel, which focuses on a vintage aesthetic. Its rooms and all public areas are scattered with carefully curated mid-century collectibles brought from around the globe, and every room offers a unique vantage point for taking in Jade Dragon Snow Mountain.

The hotel promotes Naxi-style "wild luxury" camping. Besides a highly artistic bar shaped like a tent made of mahogany, you can also opt to set up long wooden tables under canvas tents, laden with freshly grilled rustic delicacies: charcoal-grilled grey rabbit legs, Pu'er tea-marinated pork belly, milk fans spread with osmanthus sauce, traditional brown sugar rice cakes, delightfully chewy Naxi jelly, handmade baba bread, crispy-coated tofu… Then brew a pot of Yunnan black tea over the charcoal fire, and with an empty gaze outward, your heart fills with contentment.

At an even higher altitude than Baisha is Shi Luoke, a guesthouse set on the former dwelling site of Dr. Joseph Rock, the author of 'Shangri-La.' Houses built from stone, steel, and solid wood, framed by expansive glass panels, exude an especially back-to-basics charm.

Guests relax and vacation not in a lobby but in tents pitched on an alpine meadow, where you can lie or sprawl as you please, roll around at will, sip tea and play cards, or do nothing at all—just sit quietly and feel nature.

Inside Baisha Ancient Town, Hutowo is tucked behind an unassuming wooden door; only when you open it do you discover the vast openness within. There are horses and sheep, mountains and water, coffee and tea, plus tents scattered here and there. The owner, in a poetic flourish, carved out a small lake on the highland and placed a pure white piano upon it. To the naked eye, the lake may seem modest, but through a camera lens, it becomes breathtakingly beautiful.

Camping has become a fresh option for travelers who yearn to get away from crowds and enjoy a quality holiday.

Currently, the growth of glamping is enormous, expected to triple in the next five years, with the post-00s generation representing the fastest-growing age group.

While average people are still questioning the concept of the metaverse, trailblazers are already exploring metaverse travel and conceptual hotels.

At the end of last year, Marriott Bonvoy partnered with three international artists—Tcrek, JVY, and Erick Nicolay—to create three NFTs, making Marriott one of the first hotel brands to launch NFTs.

In early May this year, the world's first metaverse hotel, M Social Decentraland, officially opened. Operated by Singapore's Millennium Hotels and Resorts, it is accessible simply by registering an account.

In June, China's first metaverse hotel was also announced, with a high-end chain brand under Yuanzhou Tourism Group entering the Fractal Metaverse, acquiring a major virtual building on the waterfront of the core area, Fractal Island.

Capital may not fully grasp NFTs or the metaverse, but where young people gather and data flows, boundless possibilities lie.

For now, metaverse hotels are not primarily about accommodation but about meetings. At a time when travel is difficult, you can don a headset and come together from various countries and cities to hold meetings immersively within a hotel.

Not only can you follow the meeting in 3D, but you can also enter rooms like a real person, with settings customized to different themes. The interactive communication may attract attendees more effectively than often lengthy and tedious offline conferences.

Mark Zuckerberg has said that the metaverse is a more natural way to participate in the internet. Once online and offline experiences, along with the Internet of Things, are fully integrated, might the next step in travel gradually shrink the real world and amplify the virtual one? In a virtual space, you could not only browse and shop but also stay in comfort.

Staying in a real hotel room equipped with VR, your eyes see the metaverse world; you could step out onto a terrace to feel the breeze, chat and have drinks with other guests, or even plan a trip together—a real-life version of "the body hasn't moved but the heart has already journeyed far."

In the real world we currently inhabit, pollution has contaminated the atmosphere and oceans, causing global warming, mass extinctions, and rampant pandemics. Perhaps creating virtual worlds and high-tech sanctuaries has become the most urgent matter of our time.