Managing Kempinski's Advantages In Sanya

Puneet Singh is the general manager of the Kempinski Resort and Spa Sanya.

How do you differentiate your hotel from others in the same marketplace? What is your strategic plan for achieving your target RevPAR?
In the current market scenario, value for money, price, overall experience and a superior product are the key value drivers that will differentiate one hotel from another. At Kempinski Sanya, this is our main focus. We have the only private beach in Sanya, we have a superior hotel and room product, our location has excellent proximity to the airport and this is backed by our personalized and individual service, offering great value for money.

We plan to concentrate on the domestic market, creating more awareness about our hotel, and also to offer value for money to drive value to Kempinski Sanya.

What does Kempinski Sanya do to make sure that the quality of service is the same as other Kempinski properties around the world?
Quality of service delivery at all levels and at all guest contact areas is of extreme importance to us, and this is what differentiate us from our competitors.

We take training very seriously; skills and attitude training is done on a regular basis, by our training manager as well department heads and trainers. In addition we also provide both internal and external English training to our guest contact staff.

Kempinski also has several "Essential" training programs which are delivered to all staff.

Kempinski Sanya has an excellent location, what do you expect the percentage composition of your guests to be?
The unique selling point that differentiates us from Yalong Bay hotels is our proximity to the airport (12 minutes), our 300 meter long private beach, and 15 minutes to the city center.

Although Yalong Bay has been promoted heavily in the past by the city, the Sanya Bay area is catching up, the majority of our guests (60%+) will continue to be leisure — MICE guests would make up around 15 to 20%. Corporate travel is not a segment that is strong at this moment for us.

What are your plans for Internet marketing and online promotion of your hotel?
Internet marketing & online TPI promotion is one area where we believe lies in the future. In addition to having our own website (kempinski-sanya.com), we also partner with several third party websites, such as Ctrip, Expedia, Elong, etc.

Later this year we will be launching for all Kempinski hotels our new multilingual, user friendly website, reiterating our belief in the future of internet market for our business. In addition, to drive business through our own website, we offer exclusive deals.

What difficulties do you expect to encounter as a result of the international financial crisis?
The effects of the global financial crisis are being felt since Q4 2008. Business has declined 15% to 20% compared to same period last year. Business is coming in extremely last minute. Rates have taken a steep dive compared to last year: 7% to 12% in all segments. Pressure on rates continues to be the case across all segments and hotels. Key feeder markets to Sanya i.e. Korea, Japan, Europe, and Russia have seen declines of up to 40% in some cases.

Hence everyone is looking to the domestic market to fill the gap and this market as we all know is extremely rate sensitive. No one knows how long this will continue, however we are optimistic that by September to October 2009, we will see signs of recovery.

At present, many large hotels are focusing on business development in the MICE sector, what special expansion plans does Kempinski Sanya have for targeting the MICE market?
We have set up a dedicated events planning department, we believe that everyone goes after this segment; customer relations, personalized service, and of course, value are going to set us apart. Besides launching several promotions to attract this segment, we are working closely with Kempinski China hotels to incentivize clients to book with Kempinski for their meetings & incentives. We recently conclude a "Worldwide Meet Kempinski Week", also aiming at acquiring new MICE clients from all over China.

Within the next four to six weeks, we will be hosting a MICE showcase at our hotel, where several event planners will be invited to meet Kempinski China hotels.

What corporate social responsibility programs does the Kempinski Sanya have?
We actively participate in the Kempinski hotels worldwide "Stop TB" campaign, which is already in its second year. In the local sphere, at this moment we are not involved in any social responsibility program, however we are actively seeking opportunities.