Big players enter

In a sign of this continued interest from the industry's major players, Sol Kerzner, a South African business magnate operating one of the world's most expensive hotels in Dubai, has made Sanya his first destination in China.

Kerzner International Holdings Ltd, based in Dubai, whose flagship brand is Atlantis in the Bahamas and Dubai, has snapped up Tufu Bay in Sanya, virgin territory for tourism.

The skyline of Sanya, Hainan province. A total of 76.8 million person-trips are expected to be made annually to this island province by 2020. [Photo/China Daily]

Kerzner, founder and chairman of Kerzner International, said that he planned to open his first Chinese resort in early 2014.

The planned resort will take up an area of 16 hectares and have a half-kilometer coastline.

High-end hotel operators have long battled for a spot in Sanya, where developed beachside locations have fallen short of the increasing demand since the earliest high-end settlements appeared in 1996.

There is no shortage of buyers. Almost every virgin territory in Sanya is snapped up as soon as the local government plans to develop it.

The city now boasts a greater density of high-end hotels than any other city in China, including Beijing and Shanghai.

Sanya's local government said there are 223 tourism hotels in the city, including 13 five-star hotels, 20 four-star hotels and 26 hotels that have been built to a five-star standard, but have yet to be graded.

Almost every famous hotel brand has opened a hotel in Sanya, the crown jewel of Hainan, China's international tourism island.

Marriott International Inc opened its third hotel in Sanya last June and has two more in the pipeline.

"We are growing an increasingly strong presence in Hainan," said Paul Foskey, chief development officer of Asia Marriott International.

"Our existing hotels are performing exceedingly well."

Marriott's Ritz-Carlton Sanya located on Yalong Bay is the most successful Ritz-Carlton anywhere in the world, he added.

St Regis Hotels and Resorts International Inc, the top high-end hotel brand operated by Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide Inc, invested 2.5 billion yuan in its first Chinese resort in the last available area of coastline on Sanya's crowded Yalong Bay in December 2011.

Thanks to this pricey purchase St Regis Sanya became the only resort in the city of Sanya with a yachting marina.

On the same day as the St Regis opened for business, MGM Resorts International also opened its first hotel in the Chinese mainland in Sanya.

In recent years, five-star hotels have become the major players in the battle for beach resources. And as hotels and resorts in Sanya become increasingly luxurious, super five-star hotels have also joined the fray.

The latest developed bays in Sanya will soon be locations for 24 hotels, and all available land there has already been snapped up. This is the reason Kerzner opted for Tufu Bay, in Lingshui county, a relatively remote destination from the urban area of Sanya.

In the long-term, a greater variety of hotels enhances the appeal of a destination, increases the marketing channels directed at consumers and attracts more demand, said Hans Galland, senior vice-president of Jones Lang LaSalle Hotels, the hospitality industry division of Jones Lang LaSalle Inc, a Chicago-based real estate investment services company.

Galland said that based on the company's estimates, the number of rooms in international four- and five-star hotels in Sanya will increase by about 70 percent this year compared with the end of 2010.

According to a plan published by Hainan province's travel committee, 76.8 million person-trips are expected to be made to the island annually by 2020.