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SCMP Reporter

Luxury hotel and resort group Shangri-La  is poised for significant expansion. The Hong Kong-based company  has 47 hotels under its banner. In four years, this will swell to 80 with new properties from London to Vancouver to Muscat.

Recently promoted chief operating officer Symon Bridle  said most additions would be hotels purpose-built  unlike properties in Sydney and Cairns that were  bought from other companies and  rebranded as Shangri-La.

While its core focus will remain firmly fixed on China and Asia, the group also has its eye  on cities such as Melbourne, New York and Paris.

Having pioneered the five-star market in much of China, the Shangri-La brand is well known and the increasing number of future wealthy Chinese international travellers  is seen as a prime  market.

Shangri-La's global strategy is to open new properties in cities with business links to Hong Kong and the mainland,  and a healthy two-way flow of travellers.

In China, the  portfolio of 19 hotels will swell to 32 by 2008. It  includes expansion into areas that have  not had five-star hotels; in Inner Mongolia , for instance, properties will open in Baotou  and Manzhouli in 2007, and in Hohhot early  next year.

In Shanghai, the company  has a  600-room property in Pudong where another 375 rooms opened  this month. The 640-room Shangri-La West Shanghai opens in 2008 and after that Mr Bridle sees room for a business-class Traders hotel or even a third Shangri-La.

Are there too many banners flying in one spot? 'The sheer size of the city means there are many opportunities,' he said.

The Pudong extension will have a 1,740 square metre ballroom, the largest in the city, and a rooftop restaurant with  views over the Bund.

In Hong Kong,  he said there was room for a Traders hotel, the  second-tier brand aimed at business travellers.

In other parts of Asia, he sees  expansion opportunities; he would love to see a Shangri-La  hotel in Seoul, and resorts in Phuket and Bali.

Mr Bridle started with the group in 1990, when it had 14 properties, all of them in Asia.

He said recruitment and training of  staff were crucial.  On the mainland, the 13 new hotels planned in the next three years means 9,000 additional staff are needed including general managers, housekeepers, financial officers, chefs and  managers. 'It's a people challenge,' he said. Some will come from the  Shangri-La Academy outside Beijing; 565 graduates are  working in  mainland properties. 'We must deliver the Shangri-La product in Inner Mongolia or the United States or Muscat,' he said. 'It's got to remain the same high quality in  products and service. That's what makes the biggest impression on the customer.

'When we open the 195-room London property and the 118-room hotel in Vancouver we may need to send some staff there from our Asian properties. Although standards in all hotels must maintain high universal levels, we also want every hotel to reflect its own unique environment. It's a balance.'

As Mr  Bridle  entered his teenage years, his parents leased and managed a small hotel in the Seychelles. He would go there on his holidays from boarding school in England.

'I thought that running a hotel was a good life,' he laughs. 'You sat around the pool with a drink.'

When he left school, he did a three-year hotel course, then gained hands-on experience  as a barman in London's Gloucester Hotel while he waited for a work permit to start at Switzerland's  famed Le  Richemond  Hotel. He recalls the  rambunctious British actor Richard Burton  heading into the bar. 'My Swiss colleagues would usher me towards him,' Mr  Bridle said.  'They would say I was English so I could talk to him.'

Working in Switzerland taught him a lot about professionalism. 'There was a willingness for people to go into the hospitality industry as a career,' he said. 'They would sometimes see it as a job for life, satisfied to remain a waiter or a cook  ... They had often no aspirations to be anything more.'

He said  that was fine,  but he wanted young people joining the Shangri-La to know their careers  could soar if they  took advantage of the opportunities  in a company that  operates in 13 countries and employs 24,000.

His own career has been varied. The Englishman worked in Bermuda then at deluxe properties in South Africa before arriving in Hong Kong 15 years ago. At Shangri-La, he was general manager of the Island hotel and the Shangri-La Far Eastern Plaza in Taipei before holding senior posts  at its  corporate headquarters.

Robert Kuok controls the Kerry Group, the largest shareholder of Shangri-La and the SCMP Group, which publishes the South China Morning Post.



New havens shine on Shangri-La's horizon