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Strategies & Market Trends : Booms, Busts, and Recoveries -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: energyplay who wrote (24180)	10/14/2002 3:45:20 AM
From: TobagoJack	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

Hi energyplay, tourism in these parts will most likely drop in overall number and shift in location/focus, from Indonesia and Philippines, to Thailand and China, maybe also Vietnam/Burma. I do not have a feel for Malaysia yet. Shangri-la Hotels' business will be hurt, though should still be OK because most of their hotels are in China, and of the ones in SE Asia, most are city center business hotels that would recover quickly if we ever get done with WAT-WOT, unless not, which would not surprise me. shangri-la.com I suppose it all depends on our eventual purchase price of the shares, and on whether any of the properties get a direct hit after we buy in. In the mean nasty time, we can ghoulishly follow this counter and see if it falls to the 52 week low: 160.254.123.37 and at some point buy the entirety of this class of shares: 160.254.123.37 I am watching Brazil, Venezuela, Japan and keeping track of Argentina. Chugs, Jay

To: energyplay who wrote (24180)	10/14/2002 4:59:03 AM
From: TobagoJack	Respond to of 74559

Hi energyplay, ... also, I would expect that, if this article's contention/facts are true, then the PRC tourists will feel more comfortable with the Shangr-la/Trader Hotels' brand names given their omnipresence on mainland China (?) I must hurry with Tobago Lodge in Thailand, complete with bear spewing plastic volcano and time-share mistresses :0) economist.com Chinese tourists Follow the yellow umbrella Oct 3rd 2002 \| HONG KONG From The Economist print edition Millions already do, tens of millions soon will MOST Chinese travel at least twice a year, during the two so-called “golden weeks” around lunar new year and national day on October 1st. Most still stay inside China. But more and more are venturing abroad in packaged-tour groups. So they did again this week. Their numbers are startling. Last year, 4m Chinese travelled abroad. By 2005, it might be 16m, reckons Andy Xie, an economist at Morgan Stanley in Hong Kong. By 2020, according to the World Tourism Organisation, the number could be 100m. Yes, the Chinese are expected to replace the Americans, Japanese and Germans as the world's top travellers. The tourist industries in their favoured destinations—at present Thailand, Australia and Turkey—welcome them with open arms, even if the general population is not always so thrilled. That is because the invariably wealthy Chinese tourists spend more than their counterparts from elsewhere. In Singapore, for instance, they spend nearly twice as much per head as the Japanese. In Hong Kong, mainlanders already account for some 47% of all tourist spending and 8% of all retail sales. In South-East Asia, Chinese tourism is fast becoming a major contributor to economic growth. Indeed, boosting it is increasingly seen as a matter of survival. Paranoid theories abound about South-East Asia losing manufacturing to a rising China boasting much cheaper labour. So many economists now argue that South-East Asia's future comparative advantage will lie in supplying tourist services to the swelling ranks of China's affluent. Some countries are going out of their way to lure the Chinese hordes. Singapore and Malaysia have declared ambitions to welcome at least 1m Chinese next year. Singapore has negotiated more flights to more cities, both in booming coastal areas and in inland centres such as Chengdu. Meanwhile, western countries such as Canada, Finland and Switzerland are looking into ways to make it easier for the Chinese to get tourist visas. The main worry is that “tourists” might overstay or claim refugee status on arrival. So these countries are negotiating with China's government to join Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Turkey, Hong Kong, and most of South-East Asia in getting Approved Destination Status (ADS). Under ADS, Beijing sets outbound quotas for package tours organised by state-owned travel agencies, whose function is to ensure that nobody in their groups absconds. Last month, Beijing licensed 461 new agencies, on top of the mere 67 that were previously offering such holidays—just in time for this year's rush. The Chinese are leaving their mark on places. Macau rarely brags any more about its hidden Portuguese façades, but talks instead about turning its casino industry, Asia's biggest, into a Las Vegas for mainlanders—complete with a spewing plastic volcano in the harbour. Hong Kong's hopes are hitched to a forthcoming theme park by Disney. And Thailand's girlie bars will never be the same again.