Evolving hotel services echo shifting Spring Festival holiday trends
Located near Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City, Hilton Beijing Wangfujing is a popular hotel choice for travelers exploring the Chinese capital, while a set of thoughtful services to embrace the Year of the Snake adds to this hotel’s unique appeal.
Customers can enjoy steamed red buns filled with Beijing’s famous roast duck, and make a woodblock printing of their personal Chinese zodiac animal or a Peking Opera portrait of Sun Wukong, the star of the globally popular 3A game which debuted last year. Served on a traditional copper hot pot, desserts at this hotel are shaped after auspicious Chinese icons like lion, persimmon and cabbage.
Customized Spring Festival food and services, designed with local cultural characteristics, are also rolled out in many other Hilton hotels across the country, and even in some overseas markets, according to Wendy Huang, senior vice president and commercial director with Hilton Greater China & Mongolia.
“We hope to leverage creative cuisine and local culture — especially unique intangible cultural heritage and local customs, to make their holiday a meaningful cultural journey for our guests,” Huang said.
Celebrating the Chinese New Year by traveling and experiencing Chinese culture has become a new tradition during the Spring Festival, which nurtures new business opportunities for the hospitality sector.
Increasing affluence and a growing preference for convenience has prompted many Chinese families to dine out on Chinese New Year’s Eve. Some online platforms reported a more than 100-percent increase in orders for family reunion dinners compared to the previous year, according to the Ministry of Commerce.
“Our 10-person table dining set on that evening was fully booked,” said a staff member at Hilton Beijing Wangfujing.
The Spring Festival holiday has become a crucial period for the tourism industry. Hilton’s data showed that while bookings in traditional tourism hubs like east China during this period had remained robust this year compared to 2024, some niche destinations such as Jiuzhaigou, Urumqi and Maotai Town had also posted positive booking trends in 2025 compared with last year.
As a significant holiday characterized by family reunions, over 80 percent of the travelers during the Chinese New Year period are families, according to a report issued by the China Association of Travel Services and travel platform Tuniu.com.
Notably, the trend of multi-generational travel, including grandparents, parents and children, as well as parent-child trips, is particularly prominent, accounting for 36 percent and 27 percent of total travel numbers, respectively, the report said.
To meet family travel needs, Hilton offers connecting rooms to ensure close interaction while providing independent space for family members. Pet-friendly services are also available for people traveling with cats or dogs, according to Huang.
In recent years, the U.S.-based group has seen more than 100 hotels open each year in China — its largest overseas market. Hilton had opened hotels in over 250 destinations across China by the end of 2024.
“Chinese travelers’ needs are constantly evolving, and this will continue to fuel our service innovation,” Huang said.
Reference Link:- https://english.news.cn/20250202/f83fe4da30964b0f9325c87bd3d46ef0/c.html
Zamir Ahmed Awan is the founder and Chair of the Global Silk Route Research Alliance, a think tank in Islamabad. He studied engineering at Shanghai University in the 1980s, and years later he went back to China as Pakistan's science counsellor in Beijing, from 2010 until 2016, working on science and higher education cooperation between the two countries.…
