Walt Disney breaks ground on third themed hotel in Shanghai resort in display of US ‘soft power’ after Raimondo visit
- Once completed, the hotel will provide 400 rooms and offer an overview of the Disneyland theme park
- Construction on the yet-unnamed hotel began on Thursday beside the resort’s Wishing Star Lake
The Walt Disney Company this week broke ground on its third themed hotel at its Shanghai resort, in what the visiting US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo hailed as the display of “American soft power.”
Construction on the yet-unnamed hotel started on Thursday on the shores of the resort’s Wishing Star Lake in Pudong district, according to a statement by the Shanghai Disney Resort.
Once completed, the hotel will provide 400 rooms and offer an overview of the Disneyland theme park, adding to the 420-room Shanghai Disneyland Hotel and the 795-room Toy Story Hotel, it said.
“The new hotel will immerse guests in spaces and activities which showcase Disney characters and stories, introduce new dining, shopping and entertainment experiences, and provide more options for guests planning multi-day visits to the resort,” the resort said.
The design of Disney’s new hotel will follow the principle of being “authentically Disney and distinctly Chinese,” embedding the element of Disney storytelling and whimsy with Shanghai’s unique architectural legacy in the early 1900s, according to the statement, without saying when construction will be completed.
The expansion is the latest sign that China’s 5 trillion yuan (US$688.2 billion) tourism industry is on the mend after authorities scrapped all the Covid-19 travel and quarantine rules late last year.
The resort’s business was badly battered by China’s strict zero-Covid approach over the past three years, shutting its gates three times just in 2022 to contain the spread of the coronavirus. On one occasion, thousands of tourists were ordered to wait for hours to await the results of their nucleic acid tests before they were allowed to leave the park.
Visitors have returned since China lifted all Covid-19 restrictions. Shanghai’s authorities ramped up efforts to revive the tourism industry by tapping pent-up travel demand. Total spending on hotels and dining out soared by 42 per cent year on year to 19.4 billion yuan in the first six months of this year, outpacing 9.7 per cent growth in local gross domestic product during the same period.
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The Shanghai theme park, which opened to visitors in June 2016, was built at a cost of US$5.5 billion, with the capacity to handle 80,000 guests everyday in an area measuring 390 hectares (963 acres), triple the size of the Hong Kong resort. It is part of the Shanghai Disney resort, which also features Disneytown, the Wishing Star Park and the Toy Story Hotel.
The resort has been viewed as a successful example of melding Chinese culture and tradition into a US entertainment complex, with Walt Disney’s iconic characters such as Snow White and Pirates of the Caribbean.
