In the past few years, there has been significant investment into transforming Birmingham into a top tourism destination, with advertising campaigns and international marketing strategies playing a central role in this. However, it appears that businesses are also doing their part to welcome foreign visitors to the city, with a Birmingham hotel being ranked top in the UK by Chinese tourists.
According to online booking website booking.com, the Holiday Inn Express Snow Hill was the most popular hotel among Chinese visitors. The hotel, managed by Interstate Hotels & Resorts, lies adjacent to Colmore Business District and has 224 bedrooms, making it the ideal location for business tourists visiting Birmingham.
General manager of the hotel, Andrea Whigham, believes that the hotel’s ranking is a direct result of the increased incentives demonstrated to Chinese visitors to visit the city.
She says; “It’s fantastic to come top of the list for hotels in the UK by Chinese visitors, particularly in the wake of the recent inaugural flight from Birmingham to Beijing.
“We are of course only a short stroll from Snow Hill and New Street Train Stations, which have direct train links to Birmingham Airport, making the hotel an ideal choice for Chinese visitors.
“Congratulations are due to all of our staff, who make sure that our guests, from China or anywhere else, receive the same high standard of customer service.”
Booking.com has recently joined the Great China Welcome (GCW) Charter Campaign by VisitBritain, which aims to draw yet more Chinese tourists into the country. In order to do this, the GCW Charter Campaign will attempt to inspire hospitality businesses to offer assistance to Chinese tourists and encourage hotels and other attractions to cater for this growing market by providing information in Chinese through written means or by hiring a member of staff fluent in the language.
The reason VisitBritain is so keen to encourage businesses to adapt for Chinese visitors is that this group is fast becoming one of the largest sources of growth within the British tourism industry. During the past five years, the number of visitors to the UK from China has doubled, with the tourism body predicting that this figure could treble in the next six years.
Chinese visitors have largely been credited for the boom in “retail tourism”, which has seen London benefit from the number of visitors indulging in their taste for designer labels. This is because designer and luxury goods tend to be cheaper in the UK due to Chinese import laws, making a lucrative spending holiday to the UK a very attractive prospect.
With the Holiday Inn Express Birmingham Snow Hill clearly a popular destination for Chinese visitors, it is hoped that local shopping centres such as the Bullring and upcoming New Street development will stand to benefit in a similar way that London’s key shopping districts have.
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