iDEALShanghai Awards honor service industry stars
The eighth edition of Shanghai Daily's iDEALShanghai Awards is held at Shanghai Tower on Thursday, highlighting readers’ favorite luxury, business and designer hotels, serviced villas and apartments, as well as city landmarks.
This year’s iDEALShanghai Awards went to 57 winners in 17 categories on Thursday during a ceremony hosted at Shanghai Tower, highlighting readers’ favorite luxury, business and designer hotels, serviced villas and apartments, as well as city landmarks.
Hotels from Shanghai, Nanjing, Xiamen, Sanya, Ningbo, Hangzhou, Suzhou and Anji were honored with the awards.
Shanghai Daily Deputy Editor-in-chief Shen Ke presents an iDEALShanghai Award during the ceremony on Thursday.
“2019 marks the 20th anniversary of Shanghai Daily and we’d like to thank everyone for their support and trust, which motivates us to move forward. The eighth edition of the iDEALShanghai Awards celebrate winning hotels, serviced apartments and landmarks that have set new benchmarks in the industry with their high-quality services as well as their significant contributions to service industry development in Shanghai and China,” said Liu Qi, deputy editor-in-chief of Shanghai Daily.
iDEALShanghai was created by Shanghai Daily in 2012 to provide lifestyle and service information to expatriates in the city, as well as a platform to introduce Shanghai and China to a broader audience.
The iDEALShanghai Awards, launched the same year, aim to celebrate businesses and venues that have established close relationships with the city and its people.
It also presents an opportunity to highlight the latest trends and changes in the service industry.
Harmen Dubbelaar, general manager of Okura Garden Hotel Shanghai, noted that 2019 was a key year to raise awareness of sustainable development in hospitality.
“As a green hotel in China, we have continued down the path of sustainability and making sure that we implement measures for water conservation, energy conservation, reduction of single-use plastics and room amenities as per the instructions of the government. We think this is a very important matter and it’s important to continue to work on that,” said Dubbelaar.
Stephan Krause, general manager of Sofitel Shanghai Hyland, observed that the trend has shifted from big exhibitions and seminars to smaller workshops.
“We are a business hotel and we are actively looking into leisure, which works strongly at our location. There are smaller MICE groups and workshops that include 10 to 20 guests. They are very demanding as well and they need to have everything seamless and prepared ahead of time. They need everything together in a package and that’s what we are focusing on,” said Krause.
Click here for the full list of award winners
