Recently, Asia Vets APP learned that Jones Lang Lasalle released the "2024/2025 China Hotel Operators Confidence Index Report". The survey was completed in the second half of 2024. In this context, most domestic hotels interviewed showed a relatively conservative attitude towards their performance for the whole year. However, half of the luxury hotels are expected to demonstrate stronger resilience and growth potential in occupancy rates, contributing to a positive market trend. Looking ahead to 2025, despite the relatively moderate industry growth pace, hotel practitioners still show bullish signals in performance forecasts. Domestic luxury hotels continue to lead the market with a more optimistic attitude: over 50% of surveyed luxury hotels are confident in occupancy rates and average room rates, while economy hotel operators will continue to face challenges.

After the epidemic, compared to China, other markets in the Asia-Pacific region such as Japan, Thailand, and Singapore have opened overseas tourism earlier, thus hotel practitioners in these countries forecast a certain degree of growth in total revenue and GOP for the whole of 2024. In contrast, the majority of domestic hotel operators have a cautious outlook on this year's performance, showing a decline trend in the forecasts for these two items.

With the increasing number of inbound tourists brought by the continuous expansion of overseas markets and the active promotion of cultural tourism bureaus across the country, Chinese hotels are expected to embrace new development opportunities: the research shows that despite facing adjustment pressure, nearly 60% of hotel practitioners believe that the total revenue in 2025 will achieve growth, ranging from 0 to 20%; almost half expect an improvement in GOP in 2025.

In terms of human resources, over sixty percent of surveyed hotels indicated that they will reduce the number of employees in the future. Among them, 44% of hotels believe that factors such as the increase in social security base numbers will further raise labor costs. Under the squeeze of soft market-driven income, hotels continue to face operational challenges. Hotel practitioners need more refined human resource management, benchmarking the industry through indicators such as annual revenue per capita, annual profit per capita, and annual cost per capita, and introducing AI technology in hotel operations to enhance efficiency. At the same time, in recent years, many domestic hotels have introduced robots for concierge, room service, security, and other scenarios to reduce labor costs and improve efficiency. Compared to human labor, robots can provide 24-hour service, accurately perform repetitive tasks without discrimination, and improve service efficiency through intelligent interaction and data analysis. However, factors such as technological maturity, customer acceptance, and return on investment need to be considered when introducing them.

Research shows that due to the special nature of work and high personnel standards, the front desk, dining services, and kitchen departments of hotels face the most prominent challenge of 'difficult recruitment.' Fifty-one percent of surveyed hotels believe that 'obtaining higher compensation' is the most common reason for employee turnover. Consistent with this, seeking economic rewards is the top consideration for hotel talent in the Asia-Pacific region in 2024, followed by a sense of achievement and flexibility. Therefore, Jones Lang Lasalle suggests that in the current environment, hotels need to consider how to provide employees with a good experience in talent recruitment, training, and retention to reduce costs associated with staff turnover.

Impacted by multiple factors such as global economic uncertainty and changing consumer demand, over sixty percent of hotels in the Chinese market hold a relatively negative outlook on dining revenue and profit for 2024. However, the majority of hotel operators believe that dining revenue and profit in 2025 will remain flat or experience slight growth compared to 2024.

Hotel dining business is closely related to customer traffic. Large-scale hotels with 400-500 rooms or more are mostly driven by meetings in their dining business. Therefore, in situations where basic customer flow is guaranteed, such hotels have an advantage in terms of individual guest spending. Jones Lang Lasalle's observations have found that recently, most hotel dining businesses mainly rely on breakfast demand from staying guests and group dining, leading to a situation where the individual guest spending of hotels catering to walk-in customers is suppressed by large-scale hotels, resulting in a competitive landscape dominated by price competition. This shift in focus from creating value and enhancing customer experience to cost-effectiveness and price competition deviates from the industry's original intention and mission.

To seek long-term development in the current competitive landscape, Jones Lang Lasalle recommends that hotel practitioners consider focusing on the local market demand of the community and surrounding residents to integrate and activate local community relationships and explore potential customers. For example, hotels can regularly host community events, showcase dishes cooked using local agricultural products, to bring the local community closer and enhance the attractiveness of dining and the reputation of the hotel brand.

In terms of sustainable development, upgrading technology and improving electromechanical equipment are prioritized capital expenditures. For most hotels in China, cost reduction is the main driver for investment in sustainable development. However, the issue of capital shortage still needs to be resolved, indirectly impacting the qualification situation requiring financial support: in 2024, only 13% of surveyed hotels in the Chinese market underwent external ratings, with plans to conduct ratings in 2025. In 2025, data collection at the hotel level, capital expenditure for sustainable development, and sustainable development reporting are the three key focuses of sustainable development actions.