Plateno Group harbors ambitions to expand the network of its 7Days Inn brand and have 4,500 hotels of the brand in all Chinese cities and towns from first to fifth tiers in three years.
The upscale business hotel brand, 7Days Premium, will be adopted for properties located in first to third-tier cities commanding room rates of RMB200-RMB300 per night. The 7Days Sunshine is positioned as trendy urban economy hotels located in smaller cities and towns with rates starting at RMB100 a night.
Plateno Group’s CEO and founder Alex Zheng said the 7Days brand has started to incorporate new elements to fit with new market environment and consumer demand.
“We are seeing changes in the market and consumers, so we are launching mid to high-end brands as we see potential in this segment after we restructured the Plateno Group. The consumption power of people in smaller Chinese cities and towns is growing, prompting us to make inroads into third, fourth and fifth tier cities and towns. However, the 7Days Inn brand is already well established and hard to modify, so we have created two niche brands under the same 7Days brand,” Mr. Zheng said.
Plateno Group’s executive vice president Tongmin Su said the 7Days Premium and 7Days Sunshine sub brands were launched in 2014 with the core value of offering a “choice for the youth”. Last year 7Days also opened its first overseas hotel in Chiangmai Thailand.
“Actually we were already running a trial of the 7Days Sunshine brand in a number of fourth- and fifth-tier cities and towns last year and found the level of operations to be basically on-par with the hotels in first- or second-tier cities. Occupancy was over 90% and there are over 2,000 towns where we can have 7Days Sunshine properties. The potential is enormous, “Mr. Su said.
Since it was established in 2005, the 7Days Inn has opened over 2,000 hotels in 300 cities in China in nine years. Plateno Group is now upgrading the 7Days Inn membership system that has over 70 million members into its group-level loyalty system.
Mr. Zheng said: “The first step in Plateno Group’s development plan is to have 8-10 well established hotel brands to cover all segments from high to economy level and provide 600,000 rooms by 2018. Our core 7Days Inn brand will continue to drive the expansion. 7Days planned to sign on 700 hotels and add over 550 franchised hotels in 2014 and it will add an average of 600 franchised hotels to the brand per year for the next five years.”(Translation by David)
