China's next luxury travel spot: Tibet

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Long considered a backpacker destination, Tibet is revamping its image, starting with its first five-star hotel, the St. Regis Lhasa Resort

When you say the words, “St. Regis Hotel,” rarely do Tibet’s open skies on top of the world come to mind. But officials in China's Tibet Autonomous Region are trying to change that, hoping to jump-start the area’s allure for high-end tourists (and the dollars that come with them) with the opening of the St. Regis Lhasa Resort.
At about 3,600 meters above sea level, the three-hectare St. Regis Lhasa -- which opened last week -- is one of the highest luxury hotels in the world, with views of the Himalayas and Lhasa Valley.
The 150-room, 12-villa resort, like many new hotels, was designed with sustainable features that include solar panels and an underground water recycling system, while locally-sourced produce is served in the resort's three restaurants.
The resort's design was inspired by the nearby and still-active Sera Monastery. Built in 1419, it is a major tourist draw to the area.
"The Sera Monastery is beautiful, dramatic and lively, and very much what I wanted to capture about Tibetan culture," Jean-Michel Gathy, principal designer of Denniston International Architects, and the interior designer for the St. Regis Lhasa, told Luxist.com


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St. Regis Lhasa
22, Jiangsu Lu, Lhasa, Tibet (Xizang)
+86 (891) 680 8888
www.starwoodhotels.com/stregis

With a boutique hotel, we have only nine rooms and the guests who come here respect the culture and take good care of the rooms.— Lobsang Tashi, Lhasa boutique hotel owner hoping to capitalize on the area's new push for luxury travelers in China

"While the monastery is an immense place," he continued, "I appreciated how they have created many intimate spaces and courtyards. It was an excellent model for introducing the St. Regis brand to this region."
The St. Regis will have the market all to itself, but only for a few years, as construction on new Shangri-La and InterContinental properties started this year, according to Wang Songping, deputy chief of the tourism bureau of Tibet.
Tibet isn’t only going after major brand names though. Buildings like the 300-year-old former residence of Ling Rinpoche, senior tutor to the 13th Dalai Lamaon, which sits near the historic Jokhang Temple, are being converted into boutique hotels to meet the demand of luxury travelers to Tibet.
"The reason why we are here is the Tibetan culture," said Kerstin Odnun, a German tourist who is staying at the Lingtsang Boutique Hotel, to Chinese state media.
Far from mourning the loss of an active Buddhist temple like the one where she’s staying, Odnun said she enjoys the Tibetan ambiance and originality of the hotel.
Lobsang Tashi, the hotel owner, said he got the idea of protecting the old architecture by running a boutique hotel after conducting a case study into how Europeans like to travel.
"Before this place was a homestay and it wasn't very well protected," he said. "With a boutique hotel, we have only nine rooms and the guests who come here respect the culture and take good care of the rooms."
The opening of the St. Regis Lhasa, together with similar five-star hotels and local boutique hotels, is part of the government’s overall goal to bring in more tourist travel to the area, a plan that faces an uphill battle as government has frequently closed the region to tourists over the last decade.
According to the region's five-year plan, which runs through 2015, there will be five, five-star hotels in the region by the end of the period, and they hope the area will attract 15 million tourists arriving per year by the same deadline, said Wang to reporters.
According to the Tibet Autonomous Regional Tourism Bureau, Tibet attracted more than 5.5 million tourists in 2009 and 6.8 million in 2010.

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