Hilton Expands Its Chinese Traveler Program to 110 Properties
Skift Take
Hilton's Huanying Chinese traveler program is delivering real results because it taps into the emotional needs of guests who place a high priority on things like tea and slippers.
Hilton Worldwide announced yesterday that it's expanding the global scope of its four-year-old Huanying program, which will now provide added amenities for Chinese travelers at 110 Hilton properties in 30 countries worldwide.
"Huan ying" roughly means "welcome" in Mandarin. It symbolizes the spirit of hospitality that many hotel brands are developing to attract the booming numbers of Chinese middle class tourists anxious to explore outside their country, estimated to grow from 100 million people today to over 200 million by 2020.
Hilton reports that bookings for rooms with Huanying amenities grew 15.3% in 2014 over the previous year.
Those amenities include an in-room welcome note written in Simplified Chinese, tea kettles, jasmine tea, slippers, Mandarin television channels, and Mandarin interpretation services at the front desk. If there isn't a Mandarin-speaking associate employed at the hotel, the front desk calls a live translator, available through a Hilton partnership with translations.com, who can broker a conversation
