Rates at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Sanya are going for 18,400 RMB (2,696 USD) a night. A room with an ocean view at the Marriott Hotel will cost 15,341 RMB (2,247 USD) per night. The Pullman Yalong Bay Resort & Spa has a poolside villa that will set you back 15,985 (2,342 USD) a night. This Spring Festival, Sanya hotels are leading the way in record-breaking rates for hotels all over China as they gear up for Spring Festival peak season. Surprisingly, even with prices this high, rooms are hard to come by – many are all booked out for the holiday.

Sanya is a top choice getaway for many Chinese, because according to one frequent visitor, Ms. Chen, “Sanya is the closest thing we have to a tropical island in all of China, and I like to be near the ocean and don't wish to have to travel abroad. So, Sanya has been our top destination for travel almost every summer holiday and Spring Festival.”

Ms. Chen continued: “I had decided with my husband and child that we would travel to Hainan again this Spring Festival holiday. And when I browsed online for hotel rates with Mandarin Oriental Hotel, I had the shock of my life. The cheapest rooms there were going for 18,400 RMB per night, with some going up to 34,500 (5,045 USD) RMB a night!” As a result, Ms. Chen had no choice but to rethink her plans, “That's robbery! I could've gone on an 8-day grand tour of Australia with that kind of money. These ridiculous rates have ruined Sanya for me.”

Sanya hotel rates are the first to cross the 10,000 RMB (1,1465 USD) mark in anticipation of the travel boom during Spring Festival – with five-star hotels by Sanya Bay going at 15,000 RMB (2,197 a night. “Compared with rates this time last year, rates for five-star hotels near Sanya Yalong Bay area have gone and nearly doubled for this year,” according to an employee at Ctrip.com, an online travel agency which has been tracking the numbers.

“Reservations are going fast!” Ridiculous prices or not, reservations are hard to come by. Cnto.com, a popular booking and travel website in China, booked 210 rooms for their customers in Sanya last Spring Festival, and they've reserved over 520 rooms for their customers this year. But the ridiculously high prices are scaring off travel agencies: “Hotel rooms are hard to come by in Sanya,” Wen, a marketing manager with a travel agency remarked, “all travel agencies are more or less shying away from Hainan this year.”

So, what are some of the reasons for the ridiculous hotel rates in Sanya?

1) Hotel room traders are driving up the prices

Hotel rooms traders are more or less accepted facts in the travel industry. When Hainan first became a popular getaway amongst northern Chinese travelers, many local travel agencies found it hard to stay on top of supplying enough rooms for the unexpected boom in tourism. In time, these agencies decided to maneuver enough funding amongst themselves to purchase a constant supply of hotel rooms to feed the need of an ever-increasing line of travelers to Hainan each year.

These traders would buy out hotel rooms three or four months before Spring Festival travel season, and as time nears they would sell these rooms out to smaller travel booking websites and travel agencies for a considerable profit. These agencies would then turn these rooms out to tour groups and individual travelers for a still higher price.

“These hotel room traders probably got their rooms for four to five thousand RMB each and then just add a 1 to the highest digit and turn them out for 300% profit,” said an employee with a travel agency. Travel agencies speculated that these traders control about 40% of the pool of hotel rooms during peak travel seasons such as the Spring Festival.

2) Constraints on officials making trips abroad on public allowances have been feeding the popularity of Sanya

“It is common sense that people would not be willing to pay for such ridiculous prices out of their own pockets,” travel agent Wen commented, “of course, they would much rather go overseas than spend 18,000 RMB a night at a hotel in Sanya, even with the added travel expense.” According to the manager, officials traveling on public allowances make up the main bulk of tourists to Sanya during Spring Festival. Because there are constraints on officials making luxury trips abroad, many of them would choose instead to stay close to home, where there are less restrictions. Because Sanya is the closest thing to a resort island in China, it has become very popular with the officials.

3) Investors are speculating about business opportunities in Sanya and they too are feeding the “gold rush”

Staff with Ctrip.com also commented that opportunistic entrepreneurs in many industries are speculating about lucrative investments in Sanya, and this phenomenon is feeding the travel frenzy there. Because these managers are generally very busy throughout the year, many of them choose to travel to Sanya on the only extended holiday of the year – Spring Festival – taking the time to vacation with their families as well. “These entrepreneurs have business interests at heart, so they're not going to blink an eye about spending some 10,000 RMB a night to stay if it's going to mean lucrative opportunities in the long run.”

Mr. Lu, one of those speculating investors interested in the “gold rush” in Sanya commented, “Many of my friends have gone over to Hainan to seek out investment opportunities, and we don't want to miss out either.”

According to statistics provided by a travel agency in Guangzhou, they've serviced over 300 clients traveling to Hainan on business in January of this year – a 100% increase compared with the same period last year. And the holiday hasn’t even begun yet – according to the agency, “We're expecting more in time for the Spring Festival travels.”

 

Source: ifeng.com

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