German tourist Marian Klug-Li picks Christmas decorations at the Beijing Liangma Flora Market yesterday. (China Daily)

By Lara Farrar and Meng Jing (China Daily) – International hotels and ski resorts are preparing for an influx of foreigners choosing to spend Christmas in Beijing this year.

Hotels, including the Ritz-Carlton and the Hilton, are vying to attract foreigners with multi-course traditional Christmas dinners and family activities.

“Obviously because of the financial crisis, people are on more of a budget,” said Floria Wun, public relations director for the Ritz-Carlton Beijing. “We are trying to give people more value for their money.”

The Ritz has a set dinner on Christmas Eve and a Christmas Eve Gala featuring a buffet, drinks and door prizes.

“We are expecting 80 percent capacity,” Wun said.

The Hilton Beijing has a four-course Christmas Eve dinner and a set menu for Christmas day lunch and dinner.

“If you can’t get home for Christmas, there is no shortage of places to get a turkey dinner,” said Jim Boyce, author of bar blog beijingboyce.com.

“And you can also mix foreign traditions with local cuisine. If you can’t get turkey, have Beijing duck. If you can’t find candy canes, buy some candied hawthorn on a stick.”

Many expatriates get little, if any, time off from work, which means holiday festivities consist of a meal at a nice restaurant or a small gathering with friends who also are unable to leave.

“I don’t celebrate holidays here as I would at home,” said Barrett Parkman, an American expatriate who works as the international business development manager for a Chinese company.

“In some ways, I forget about the holidays. This year is the first year I have a Christmas tree and it feels like Christmas in my home,” he said.

Parkman said it was too expensive to return to the United States for Christmas.

“We are upper middle-class in China, but we don’t make enough money to go home more than once a year. The expenses of going back are quite prohibitive,” he said.

Meanwhile, ski resorts are another popular excursion for foreigners who cannot get out of the country for Christmas.

“We don’t have any special plans for Christmas, but we are expecting more foreign people at that time,” said Liu Na, a spokesperson at Nanshan Ski, a popular ski resort outside of Beijing.

“It will look like a small United Nations.” – read more at ChinaDaily.com

A lone customer selects Christmas decorations at IKEA. (China Daily)

By Meng Jing (China Daily) – Businesses in Beijing are gearing up for one of the biggest shopping seasons in China, but some predict bad tidings for profit after the economic crisis.

Tianyi market, the largest wholesale market in Beijing with more than 3,000 traders selling everything from buttons to jewelry, is busy preparing for Christmas.

Li Qingfu, the deputy general manager of Tianyi, told METRO: “Christmas and Spring Festival are the two major shopping seasons in Beijing. In our market, we estimate that a throughput of goods for Christmas season alone will be close to 100 million yuan.”

A 4-m-tall Santa Claus has been welcoming shoppers from the roof of the market since early November, and Christmas decorations and lights already decorate the market’s first floor.

But a trader in the market surnamed Ge is not so optimistic. He put out Christmas items on shelves on Nov 7, 10 days earlier than previous years in a move to counter reduced consumer spending.

Ge said: “Since the exports of Christmas goods have been so drastically influenced by the global financial crisis, I decided to start selling decorations earlier and avoid market competition.”

Ge said he has a customer in the US who used to order as much as 1 million yuan of Christmas decorations every year. This year the customer cut the order in half. – read more at ChinaDaily.com…

Hong Kong's Harbour City

Nickkita Lau (The Standard) – High-end sales helped Hong Kong’s giant Harbour City shopping center to grow more than 10 percent in the first nine months of the year with a total of HK$10.4 billion in turnover.

The Canton Road shopping center in Tsim Sha Tsui is hoping the spike in sales will continue and has budgeted HK$13 million for Christmas promotion.

“This growth could be attributed to the revival of consumer confidence,” assistant general manager (leasing) Canis Lee Lai-yi said yesterday.

According to her, the growth in the first six months was rather slow at 6 percent, but it bounced back strongly as shoppers have adapted to the human swine flu pandemic and signs of economic recovery have surfaced.

Lee said based on the current performance and the expected surge in retail sales in the Christmas peak season, annual retail sales are likely to break last year’s record of HK$13.4 billion.

The rent for new tenants and renewed leases has increased 25 percent, with the per- square-foot rents starting at HK$200 to HK$600 or even higher.

Lee said as long as sales are satisfactory, tenants are willing to pay a reasonable rent.

Lee does not consider the opening of more malls in the area as a threat to Harbour City since the formation of a retail cluster will boost the appeal of Tsim Sha Tsui as a shopping destination for tourists. read more at The Standard…