Chapter 231 Raising the Butcher Knife
Fang Hexuan withdrew his thoughts and continued reading the report.

There are only four first-class hotels in Hong Kong: Grand Hyatt, Mandarin Oriental, Peninsula and Regent.

There are six five-star hotels: Marriott, JAL, Ramada Plaza, Shangri-La, Sheraton and Hilton.

Special-class hotels and five-star hotels are uniformly classified as high-end hotels, also known as Class A hotels, by the industry and outsiders. They are among the most competitive ceiling-level enterprises in Hong Kong.

This type of hotel generally does not accept reservations, but is able to accommodate international high-spending travelers at a high level in terms of business management, architectural design, and service quality.

At the same time, it is equipped with luxurious restaurants, coffee shops and entertainment venues to meet the needs of local high-spending customers.

The Peninsula Hotel, Mandarin Oriental Hotel and its own Hilton Hotel, which Fang Hexuan often visits, all do well in these two aspects.

At least as a time traveler, he was not dissatisfied.

Class A hotels are often located in prime locations with very high land prices, and generally only multinational hotel groups or large local companies have the financial strength to operate them.

They usually receive wealthy businessmen or senior government officials from developed countries. Although the investment is huge, the rate of return is also high.

In addition, special-class hotels are one level higher than five-star hotels. This is one of the reasons why Fang Hexuan still has thoughts about The Peninsula Hotel and Mandarin Oriental even though he already has Hilton.

Four-star and three-star hotels are usually referred to as Class B hotels. These hotels have generally complete functions and facilities, but their guest rooms are not as spacious as those of Class A hotels, and their comfort and convenience are also not as good.

But after the mainland's reform and opening up, many foreign merchants wanted to enter and expand their product sales markets.

As a result, Hong Kong has become a stopover for many mid-level executives with limited spending budgets on business trips.

Therefore, Class B hotels with good living facilities, commercial services and decent comfort have become their first choice.

The occupancy rate of this type of hotel is even higher than that of Class A hotels, and most of them are operated by local Chinese companies in Hong Kong, and there are also many chain stores of international hotel groups.

Representative ones include City Garden, Kowloon, Empire, Excelsior, Cornwallis, Airland, Guangdong, Hyatt, Marco Polo, Metropole International, and Park Lane.

In addition, Class B hotels accept reservations from tourist groups, and the catering, banquets, conferences, exhibitions and entertainment venues they run can also attract local customers, and their income is considerable.

Compared with Class A hotels, Class B hotels do not require as much investment, but have a higher occupancy rate, making them the preferred target of many investors in and outside Hong Kong.

Seeing this, Fang Hexuan already knew how to start. At the moment, the Class B hotel seemed very suitable for him to practice.

As for the rest of the report's analysis of general hotels (below two stars) or guesthouses, he was too lazy to even read it.

Since most of Hong Kong's hotels were built after the 60s, their locations were planned to coordinate with the development of the tourism industry.

Simply put, they are generally concentrated in tourist areas with convenient transportation, dense shops, and catering and entertainment industries.

Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong's largest foreign tourist area, has one-third of the city's total number of hotels.

In addition, many mid- to high-end hotels have emerged in the Harbour Road areas of Hong Kong Island, including Central, Causeway Bay, Queensway, Wan Chai, etc.

Finally, Kowloon Yau Ma Tei and Mong Kok are also concentrated areas with many two-star hotels, mainly because of the convenient transportation. As the Hong Kong government has started the development of major new towns, hotels have also begun to be built in Shatin and Tsuen Wan in the New Territories.

Fang Hexuan looked through the list and specific addresses of all Class A and Class B hotels, and found two Class B hotels that were exactly his targets.

That’s right, Fang Hexuan’s first step into the hotel industry was not to buy land like a hardworking gardener and then build his favorite hotels one by one.

Instead, they adopt the method of direct procurement and acquisition, regardless of whether the hotel industry will call them "barbarians at the gate" or not.

The two hotels are the Imperial Hotel and Holiday Inn Golden Mile.

The reason for choosing these two companies is, of course, because their common boss is the Harilela family of Sindhu.

Fang Hexuan had a feud with the Sindhu people in both of his lifetimes, so he chose the Xialilila family as his first target without any further consideration.

What's more, the Sindhu family is of average strength and can be considered an easy target.

In 1922, Nivens Harilela left Sindhu and came to China to do business. He initially opened a small shop in Shanghai and sold Chinese handicrafts to overseas customers.

The business was doing well, so Nivens brought his whole family to China to settle down. In fact, they were the most annoying Indians in the foreign concessions at that time.

In 1934, Nivans Harilela brought his family to Hong Kong. His eldest son Harry and his two younger brothers started out as newspaper vendors. Later, Harry worked as an intern in a trading company run by Sindhu people.

During the occupation of Hong Kong, the Harry brothers started a business selling military notes, food and medicine to the Japanese army and made their first fortune.

After Hong Kong was recovered, Harry, who had taken over the responsibility of supporting the entire family, started doing business with the British Army again. He bought vegetables and grain from Hong Kong farmers, and then exchanged them for large quantities of tobacco and alcohol left behind by the retreating Japanese army. He then sold these tobacco and alcohol to the Chinese. Over the years, he made a lot of money.

Later, Harry, who had become familiar with the British Army, began to tailor military uniforms for them. Next, he successively received orders for military uniforms from more than 30 US military bases in Guam, Vietnam, Hawaii and other places.

In this way, Harry Sharilela made his first million by doing business with the British and American militaries.

This was one million in the 50s.

With this initial capital, the Harilela family opened a tailor shop in Hong Kong, sewing suits and fine women's clothing for tourists and dignitaries from all over the world.

In 1959, Harry Harilela purchased the operating rights of the entire first floor of the Imperial Hotel in Tsim Sha Tsui. Two years later, he acquired the Imperial Hotel in full.

In 1965, he and more than a dozen small landowners in Kowloon jointly purchased a piece of land on Nathan Road, intending to build a new brand of hotel.

But the explosion in 67 scared these small landowners into withdrawing from the joint venture, and thus the Xialilila family became the sole owner of the land.

In 1969, Harry Harilela listed the Empire Hotel and invested 40% of its shares in the stock market. By pumping money from the stock market, he had enough funds to start construction of the Holiday Inn Golden Mile.

The hotel was not completed and opened until 1975. It has a total of 19 floors and 600 rooms. It is considered to be relatively large and relatively high-ranking among Hong Kong's Class B hotels.

The report showed that this hotel was 100% owned by the Xialilila family, which put Fang Hexuan, who was about to take up the butcher knife, in a dilemma.

(End of this chapter)