Huazhu Group, which started with the budget hotel Hanting, is constantly expanding its business territory. The Paper learned from Huazhu Group that Huazhu’s new headquarters building will be completed in two years. In addition to having headquarters functions, this project will also include a research and innovation base, a training center, etc., in order to meet the needs of Huazhu’s rapid expansion in the future.

On August 25, the groundbreaking ceremony for Huazhu Group’s Jiangqiao headquarters was held in Jiangqiao Town, Jiading District, Shanghai. The project covers an area of ​​32,226.7 square meters and has a total construction area of ​​83,749.50 square meters.

According to the Huazhu Group’s land plan, after the project is completed, it will become a multi-functional complex that includes the Huazhu Group’s office headquarters, an industrial Internet research and innovation base, a financial settlement center, Huazhu University (training center) and a demonstration hotel.

Huazhu Group President Jin Hui revealed that with the promotion and implementation of relevant innovation strategies, the rapid expansion of Huazhu’s business scope and the continuous growth of its talent team, the Jiangqiao headquarters project will play a great role.

In fact, as early as November 2018, Huazhu R&D Center was unveiled in Jiangqiao, Shanghai. The R&D center aims to focus on future accommodation trend research, creative design and IT technology applications, including hotel product design, construction material testing, smart product applications, etc., to build an open innovation ecosystem.

According to Huazhu Group, the design and iteration of traditional hotel products requires finding hotel properties before they can be gradually implemented. Finding a hotel property that can be used to implement design drawings into model rooms is often not easy. It takes both time and high operating costs. However, with the R&D center, designers’ ideas can be tested on the spot immediately, and construction materials can be tested in real time, and can be quickly and continuously adjusted, thereby helping ideas to be better implemented and accelerating the iteration cycle of hotel products. In addition, intelligent products no longer need to be tested in existing hotel rooms first, which delays hotel operations. Instead, mature technologies can be "moved" directly to the hotel after being fully tested in the R&D center.

In addition to the needs for R&D and innovation, Huazhu’s huge expansion plan will inevitably require a headquarters property project with greater scale and multi-functionality to carry its development needs.

In recent years, Huazhu’s hotels are facing comprehensive innovation and upgrading. Just in July this year, Hanting released the latest version 3.0 and announced that the number of new contracts signed by Hanting Hotels across the country will rapidly increase by 1,000 next year, with the total reaching 3,500 by the end of next year. Also this year, Huazhu also announced that it will consider international high-end hotel groups as its future competitors. In order to compete with its competitors, Huazhu listed its five brands as Xiyue, Huajiantang, Grand Mercure, Novotel and Mercure as its main targets for entering the high-end hotel market. In addition, Huazhu also began to enter the field of heavy asset investment and tried a soft brand franchise system in order to "eat" the "big cake" of independent hotels.