At The Most Influential Hotel Brand Award Ceremony 2012 on August 27, 2013, Mr Luo Qin, COO of VeryEast Cn, 9first com and Meadin com, elaborated the development of hotel brands in 2012 and predicted the trends of brand development and brand marketing in 2013

　　"There were constant changes and challenges in Chinese hotel industry in 2012. No matter international hotel brands (such as Shangri-La, Sheraton and Hilton), or Chinese domestic hotel brands (such as New Century Hotel, Huatian Inn, Jianguo), or the economic hotel brands (such as Home Inn, Hanting, Jinjiang Inn), they not only fought in their respective hotel markets, but also expanded their territory vertically and launched their new hotel brands. Therefore, if a hotel group wants to take a share of Chinese hotel market in the fierce competition, the value and significance of a brand cannot be mentioned too much." Mr. Luo Qin, COO of VeryEast.Cn, 9first.com and Meadin.com said at The Most Influential Hotel Brand Award Ceremony 2012.

　　The Most Influential Hotel Brand Award Ceremony 2012 was held at New Century Grand Hotel Hangzhou by Meadin.com on August 27, 2013. At this ceremony, Mr. Luo Qin analyzed Chinese Hotel Brand Development Report 2012, elaborated the development of hotel brands in 2012 and predicted the trends of brand development and brand marketing in 2013.

　　"International hotel brands, Chinese domestic hotel brands and economic hotel brands have formed a triangle in Chinese hotel industry. As we all know, the most important part is the battle of brands, which is the fundamental and core competition between hotel groups. The basic reason is that a good brand can make a hotel group keep up with the competition."

　　Based on the value of brands for hotel groups, Mr. Luo Qin has explained Meadin Brand Index (MBI in short) in detail, which is used to impartially reflects the achievements of hotel brands in a specified period in three aspects of consumer influence, media influence and hotel industry influence. Consumer influence refers to keyword logging in the mainstream search engines; media influence refers to news logging in the main web portals and hotel industry influence refers to news logging in the hotel web portals. Hotel brand ranking is published periodically to report brand building and to provide free data analysis for the hotels.

　　"MBI has truly recorded the trends of Chinese hotel industry in 2012,” Mr. Luo Qin said, "2012 is the year of fast development in hotel numbers and hotel qualities for Chinese hotel industry.”

　　International hotel groups have been in Chinese hotel market for 33 years. Nowadays, there is an international hotel open for business in every 4 days. There is no doubt that China has become one of the fast-growing markets. Confronted with fierce competition in Chinese hotel market, international hotel groups have constantly adjusted their expansion strategies in 2012. They have basically realized the overall layout in main cities, such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, so they have expanded their territories into the second or third-tier cities. Besides, they started to create localized hotel brands and carried out localization strategy. After IHG launched the hotel brand Hualuxe, which is specifically designed for Chinese luxury travelers, Accor has remodeled its Grand Mercure, which is developed mainly in second or third-tier cities.

　　In 2012 Chinese domestic hotel brands started to awaken; Huatian Chinagora Hotel opened in Paris, which marks Chinese hotel chains entering international hotel market; Chinese commercial real estate developers started to create their own high-end hotel brands, such as Wanda Group’s Wanda Realm, Wanda Vista, Wanda Reign; Greenland Group’s Primus and The Qube; and Beijing Tourism Group’s luxurious hotel brand Nuojin.

　　In 2012 the hotel number of fasting-growing Chinese economic hotel chains exceeded 1000, such as Home Inn, 7 Days Inn and Hanting. The competition between economic hotel chains has shifted from hotel number to the mid-scale hotel market after suffering from development bottlenecks.

　　In 2012 Chinese hotel industry has encountered the challenges of talent shortage, aggravated homogenization and rising costs, also embraced the era of new media, such as QR code, APP, microblog and Wechat. Under the influence of Chinese central government’s austerity measures, Chinese hotel industry has gradually realized that brand marketing cannot rely only on traditional media in the future and doing so would make a hotel group at a disadvantage in the fierce competition.

　　Mobile marketing will be an important way of hotel brand marketing and more and more hoteliers will use QR code in the future hotel operation. On the other hand, the austerity measures of Chinese central government have made high-end hotels lose so much government business that the high-end hotels have turned to the mid-scale hotel market. Under these circumstances, the mid-scale hotel market will embrace new opportunities of development.

　　"In 2013 there are challenges and opportunities in Chinese hotel industry. Brand is the core competitiveness of a hotel. The one who has outstanding hotel brand can seize the attention of consumers and grab big market share in the domestic and overseas hotel market,” he emphasized, “Hotel brand building is the most important part of improving a hotel’s core competitiveness.”