I spent today in Suzhou (it's about 90 minutes from Shanghai). The Kempinski Suzhou had a soft opening today and since the global CEO Reto Wittwer came for the opening, I was invited to meet privately with him for a few minutes to go over some work we do for them in China. Kempinski has been a client for our direct marketing products for 11 continuous years in China — we provide them their full platform for online advertising in China as well as managing their loyalty direct marketing databases.

Kempinski has many management contracts in China — including Dalian, Beijing, Xi'an, Wuxi, Shanghai — and what separates them from other luxury hotel chains is the extent to which they maximize the differences among their hotels around the world. This means each Kempinski is truly different, whereas many other luxury hotel chains with dozens/hundreds of outlets tend to keep the same services and "feel" within each of their facilities. This can be both a good and a bad thing. Reto mentioned to me that he doesn't want to open more hotels than the number of years the hotel company has been in existence — the company started in Germany in 1897 and the company currently runs 111 hotels around the world.

Most importantly, and of most interest to anyone doing business in China, is Kempinski's plans to make a big announcement this week about a new China-only hotel brand they are unveiling. This new brand will only exist in China and they plan to have 40 of these 5-star hotels built and running within 24 months. That's all I can publicly say now, but this is an amazingly quick pace to get 5-star projects up and running, and I wonder where the heck they are going to get so many talented executive teams to run those prestigious places. Hotels in China already suffer from a MASSIVE human resources shortage, so I wish them luck.

Ah, one more corporate social responsibility thing: during the ceremony today the hotel owner also donated RMB500,000 for aid in the earthquake relief in Sichuan.