Travel and tourism are changing, says boss of Hong Kong hotel group Dorsett, which is adjusting its offerings in response
- The pandemic has changed hotel guests’ expectations in areas such as sustainability and local experiences, Dorsett International president Winnie Chiu says
- The group’s new apartment-hotel concept, Dao by Dorsett, which opens in June in London, caters to rising demand for longer stays
With a hotel in the Chinese city of Wuhan as well as several in gateway cities across Asia, Dorsett International was one of the earliest hospitality groups to witness what would become known as Covid-19 and its effect on the industry.
“The first sign for us was really right in the beginning [of the pandemic] with our hotel Dorsett Wuhan,” says Winnie Chiu Wing-kwan, president of Hong Kong-headquartered Dorsett Hospitality International. “We understood very early on that we were facing an escalating situation – though no one could have quite imagined just how big of an impact Covid-19 would have, nor that it would last over two years.”
The group – which includes properties under the D.collection, Silka and Dorsett brands and has partnerships with Agora (Japan), Diamond Resorts (United States) and TWH (Germany, Austria and Czech Republic) – has gone on to house more than half a million quarantine guests and 12,000 frontline workers. Several of its properties in Japan and Europe were turned into vaccine centres.
“It has definitely been a tough few years,” Chiu says. “Dorsett has been able to keep performing because we had a business that was agile enough to adapt.”
She believes there will be a travel boom as more countries open up. “The first signs of recovery we saw were in locations where domestic travel was strong, such as China, the UK and Australia. In fact, we opened our first hotel in Australia, Dorsett Gold Coast, during the pandemic, in December of last year.”
