What’s in a name? It’s a big deal for China’s hoteliers and real estate developers, if the brand is too ‘big, foreign or weird’
- Chinese authorities are cracking down on property projects and hotels to get rid of names that were ‘big, foreign, weird’ or based on homonyms
- Vienna Hotel Management of Shenzhen said the trademark of its namesake hotels in Hainan are protected by the law and is appealing the decision
China’s property developers and hoteliers are bearing the brunt of a government edict to standardise location names, as tens of thousands of apartment projects, hotels, townships, communities and office towers across several provinces are forced to rename and rebrand themselves.
The edict was the result of a 2018 policy by six government departments to get rid of “Big, Foreign, Weird” names, and names that played on homonyms. The policy required the country’s provincial and county authorities to come up with lists of location names that fell into these categories by the end of March, with the instruction to rename them.
Several provinces including Shaanxi, Hainan and Zhejiang have each listed dozens of property names – mostly real estate projects and hotels – that fall under each of these categories, prompting county and district-level authorities to instruct developers to rebrand their projects.
“To stem the phenomenon, the government should trace the problem to its root, which is the business registrar that approved the names,” said Zhao Huanyan, chief analyst for Huamei Consultancy’s hotel division. “They should avoid approving names that undermine China’s cultural confidence.”
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Names that exaggerate the size or significance of a project or location, with words like “world,” “grand,” “international,” or even “central” will be subject to revision under the “Big” category.
