Chongqing Evening News
February 5, 2010

The Chongqing Guest House, a city landmark, will change its name under a new management agreement, reports the Chongqing Evening News.

The hotel, which adopted its current name in 1956 after serving as a guest house for American soldiers during the anti-Japanese war, signed a deal with deluxe hotel chain Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts yesterday that will make it the first Shangri-La hotel in the city.

However, the loss of the Chongqing Guest House name has upset many city residents, who see the change as yet another example of an international heavyweight obliterating a beloved local brand. Locals are still smarting from Tianfu Cola's defeat at the hands of Pepsi back in the mid-nineties.

The old Chongqing Guest House

The newspaper presented three objections to the name change, along with rebuttals from the head of the company that owns the hotel:

1. Trashing a good brand

Chongqing Guest House is one of Chongqing's time-honored brands. Name changes mean that the city's brands are continuing to decline. The replacement may be a famous global brand, but the inability of local brands to flourish is still a tragedy.

Response: The brand will endure in four areas

Tourism Holdings Group chairman Li Yunguang said that the brand would not die but would continue to be developed in several areas. First, the location of the Shangri-La hotel would still be called CGH-Poly International Plaza, retaining the old name. The Chongqing Guest House Co, Ltd would continue as owner of the Shangri-La, and would continue to manage the CGH Commercial Building to correspond to the new hotel. Star of Chongqing Guest House would continue to operate under its current name as a budget hotel. And the Chongqing Guest House brand of moon cakes, zongzi and New Year's gift items would not change their name. So the Chongqing Guest House brand would endure in those four areas.

The new Shangri-La

2. Foreign help is not needed

The Chongqing Guest House has been Chongqing's "Whampoa Academy" for hotel management, and many of the city's hotel managers got their start there. At the signing ceremony, many veteran CGH staff said that the hotel's management has always been first-rate. An expert said that because CGH management was practically at the level of an international management company, there was no need to bring in a foreign brand with its foreign name.

Response: The new hotel has an international focus

Li Yunguang said that the choice to partner with Shangri-La was made primarily because of its brand recognition and management experience. Although Chongqing Guest House is an established brand, its influence is limited to Chongqing, or at most the rest of the country. Shangri-La is an internationally-famous deluxe hotel brand whose influence is global. Chongqing has been receiving an increasing number of guests from outside regions and foreign countries since it became a directly-controlled municipality, and it needs internationalized brands. It will be able to attract guests from throughout the world through Shangri-La's global marketing network. In addition, Li believes that even in hotel management, Shangri-La is superior. In hotel design, for example, a meeting room's layout should allow guests easy entry without crowding. Rooms have their own requirements: if a guest orders room service, it ought to arrive within a few minutes. CGH's partnership is, to some extent, a self-improvement effort.

There's one additional objection: that a foreign interloper will find it difficult to do business with a local company, but both the question and answer seem a little perfunctory.

As for the name issue, the article proposes a solution: rather than simply replacing the old name, why not combine the two, and call the new hotel Chongqing Guest House: Shangri-La?