Day 5 --- 7/8/10

Today's discussions are related to the hospitality, travel, resort and international property markets.

We started our discussion with a discussion on the general hospitality market trend. We discussed about how the industry reacted to the recession and the impact of the recession on the travel behavior. We specifically discussed on the short term and potential long term behavioral changes on the part of travellers as a result of the economic downturn.

We then discussed one of the articles I submitted on the status of the Chinese real estate sector. The article particularly measures the degree of growth in the Chinese real estate market with reference to the growth in GDP and the impact of the domestic market growth in the overall GDP growth.
The article mentions that the Chinese economy has recovered quickly. It asserts that the early government intervention and lower levels of debt compared to its western counterparts helped it to weather the financial storm better than most. The article also mentions that the current upswing is resulting in unprecedented liquidity easing after the global financial crisis and so there are some recent housing market developments that appear symptomatic of a bubble. The article describes that sales have nearly doubled over the past year, housing credit has increased sharply, and the price of houses in the secondary market has accelerated rapidly. Yet from an affordability standpoint, property prices appear expensive and seem to have factored in a certain amount of future income growth.

The article concludes that there are enormous opportunities for investing in China’s long term growth and resurgence as the emphasis changes from growth speed to growth quality.

...

The second article I submitted was an analysis of a survey done towards the end of last year. The analysis was done based on responses of more than 260 hotel and restaurant executives and focuses on the industry trends for 2010.

The results were summarized in five major topics:

a) most important initiatives

- main focus was expected to be on increasing core revenue and finding new revenue sources. Increasing efficiency and streamlining operations was another important initiative mentioned in the responses, indicating that the industry was on its way to rebounding.

b) recovery vs. recession

- nearly half of the respondents said they were starting to see signs of a turn-around but were proceeding with caution.

c) customer engagement efforts

- most operators were targeting new customer segments beyond their traditional focus followed by adding value to attract new customers.

d) reaction to social trends, and

- nearly half of the survey participants identify social networking as a top company initiative in the year ahead. From Facebook to Twitter, and everything in between, hospitality companies are tapping into social networking at growing rates to build brand loyalty and to keep their fingers on the pulse of consumer discussions. What's more, an arsenal of apps, plug-ins and analytic tools are available that make it even easier for businesses to track and drill-down into user data.

e) IT budgets for 2010.

- Most of the respondents expected some reduction in IT budget as part of the streamlining efforts.

We also discussed other articles submitted. Some of the other topics we covered included:

- a contrasting outlook towards the status of the Chinese economy;

- travl trends,