A vast public transport network is being built to serve the expected flood of visitors to Shanghai Disneyland. A hub at the west gate of the amusement park will comprise five bus terminals, car and taxi parking lots, washrooms and six lounges. The city government is inviting tenders for the construction of the hub that is budgeted at CNY182 million. The project should be completed within a year. Metro Line 11 will also be extended from Luoshan Road Station to Disneyland. A new elevated highway, costing more than CNY10 billion is being built. It will be completed in 2015, just in time for the opening of the park. An upgrade of the super capacitor buses that were used at the World Expo 2010 Shanghai may be used to shuttle visitors. Shanghai Disneyland, Disney’s first theme park on China’s mainland, is expected to attract 7.3 million visitors a year in 2015. It has recruited more than 300 Chinese professionals ahead of the opening, with at least 5,000 more to join when it opens in two years time.

Hilton Group is launching a mid-scale brand called Hilton Garden Inn in China to cater to the needs of the fast growing number of business travelers. The brand will be launched in five Chinese cities – Lijiang, Chengdu, Harbin, Dandong and Huzhou – and will be expanded later to more second- and third-tier cities. The group will also open its fifth Conrad hotel in China later this year. Alex Kassantly, General Manager of Beijing Conrad Hotel said that Hilton Hotels & Resorts is on track to achieve its ambition of expanding its presence from the current 32 hotels on the Chinese mainland with more than 12,000 rooms to more than 150 properties with 55,000 rooms in the next several years. By 2015, the group will have hotels in 75 cities across the country. Yang Honghao, Researcher with the China Tourism Academy, said in a report on China’s hotel industry that the country has 60,000 hotels with 14,000 stars. By the end of 2010, nearly 70 international hospitality brands from 41 countries and regions had entered the Chinese market, managing about 20% of the country’s top-end hotels and taking 80% of the profits. Hilton plans to open around 10 properties this year in China. China is expected to have the same number of hotel rooms as the United States by 2025, said Richard Solomons, Chief Executive of InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG). In 2012, the group saw its businesses in China growing rapidly, with operating profit up 21%. Of its 1,053 properties under development globally, more than half are based in China. Last year the hotel group created luxury hotel brand Hualuxe hotels and resorts specifically for the Chinese market with a plan to reach 100 cities across China. One of the major challenges for China’s hotel industry is human resources. China’s labor market has a shorter-than-average employee retention rate and fierce competition for trained and qualified service personnel, the China Daily reports.

Shanghai plans to extend the visa-free policy at its two airports to the cruise terminals, and set up duty-free stores and tax-refund outlets there. Since January 1, air travelers from 45 countries have been permitted a 72-hour visa-free stay inside the “administrative area” of Shanghai, provided they have visas and a plane ticket to travel to a third country. Developing the cruise industry has become an important strategy for seaside cities like Shanghai, Tianjin and Sanya to boost tourism. In March, the number of passengers at Shanghai’s Wusong and Beiwaitan ports rose 60% year-on-year to about 90,000. Industry insiders said the visa-free program will cement Shanghai’s reputation as a global tourist hotspot and help it compete in attracting overseas visitors. “We have been calling for the policy since the beginning of this year,” said Zhang Fubao, General Manager of the Shanghai Port International Cruise Terminal. Gu Xiaoming, Professor of the Tourism Department at Shanghai’s Fudan University, said the policy can put Shanghai in a better position to compete with Tianjin and Hainan province as a cruise homeport.

The Beijing municipal government will implement a new regulation on taxi bookings through hotlines and mobile apps from June 1. Beijing currently has two major taxi hotlines – 96103 and 96106 – run by separate companies. The Beijing Transportation Commission noted earlier that relatively few passengers now book taxis through hotlines, only about 30,000 rides out of more than a million each day. The Beijing government plans to make available a new unified taxi booking app for mobile phones. A public hearing will be held on May 23 in Beijing to decide how much taxi fares should be raised, part of an effort to address the taxi shortage in the capital. According to the plan, taxi drivers will charge CNY13 for the first 3 kilometers – up from CNY10 – and an additional CNY2.3 or CNY2.6 for every kilometer beyond that, up from CNY2. There has been no price increase since 2006. The CNY3 additional fuel surcharge will be reduced to CNY1 per journey. Per 5 minutes waiting in traffic, 2 kilometers instead of one will be added to calculate the fare. The pricing reform will allow taxi drivers to  earn an extra CNY1,400 to CNY2,300 a month.

Shanghai is likely to introduce the country’s first suspended monorail train by 2015 to improve the city’s worsening traffic congestion and pollution levels. Suburban Jiading district as well as Changning district are among the many prospective bidders to clinch the first deal with Air Train International, the manufacturer of the system, according to Chairman Chen Changgui. The first track connecting two campuses of Dortmund University in Germany has carried 5,000 passengers on a daily basis without a single accident since its maiden trip in 1984. It costs about CNY150 million to build 1 kilometer of suspended monorail, which is about one quarter of the cost needed to build the same length of subway. It takes just one week to construct 3 kilometers. Wang Mengshu, Deputy Chief Engineer of the China Railway Tunnel Group and a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE), said the “floating train” serves as a perfect supplement to public transportation in a city’s busy area. The system can carry about 10,000 people in one hour, at a speed of 30 to 50 km/h, the China Daily reports.