What were the opportunities that Cendant saw in bringing in economy hotels to China?
Super 8 China saw the opportunity to bring a world-class brand to a world class emerging hotel market in one of the largest and fastest growing economy hotel markets. The current Chinese economy hotel market shares, in many ways, many of same characteristics of the US market in the 1970’s, when Super 8 was first established in the U.S. At that time, the US budget hotel market was highly fragmented, with many unprofitable hotel properties and few brands, few economies of scale, and competition based mainly on price and not value. Super 8 felt it could take the lessons learned from the US experience and translate these to China. It is the stated objective of the company to run the best and most profitable economy hotels in the market. What do you see as stumbling blocks for future hotel growth? We are in the service business, and human resources are always a big challenge. The company needs to locate a large number of talented people, then take them through extensive training. As we are
