This summer, it seems more and more five-star hotels have started setting up street stalls.
For example, the Jinling Zijing Mountain Hotel in Shanghai is selling Jinling pork buns for 5 RMB each and braised lion’s head meatballs for 10 RMB apiece. The Xiaoxiang Huatian Hotel in Changsha is offering duck feet for 6 RMB each and cold noodles for 8 RMB a serving. Yonghe Bojue International Hotel in Zhengzhou is selling crayfish, and so on.
On Douyin (China’s TikTok), videos about hotels setting up stalls have already surpassed 120 million views. On Xiaohongshu (Little Red Book), there are even bloggers reviewing these “hotel street stalls.”
Why are five-star hotels turning to street vending? One of the most direct reasons is business pressure. In 2024, the average revenue per available room in the hotel industry fell by 9.7% year-on-year, and even top players like Huazhu Group saw their net profit drop by 25.4%. From 2019 to 2024, the number of five-star hotels decreased from 845 to 736, a loss of 109 hotels.
So now we’re seeing all kinds of “self-rescue” attempts by five-star hotels. Besides street vending, there are many other approaches:
Bringing star chefs to your home: Some hotels now offer “five-star chefs cooking at home” services. For 2,000–3,000 RMB, a chef will come to your house and prepare a full-course meal with more than ten dishes.
Targeting seniors: Some hotels have launched afternoon teas tailored for older guests, or even long-stay packages for retirees.
Cultural products: Many hotels have developed their own cultural IPs or collaborated with others. For instance, the Waldorf Astoria in Chengdu teamed up with the Chengdu Museum to launch a line based on the “Oriental Myths” IP.
Merchandising amenities: Some hotels turn guestroom items into retail products. For example, the toiletry kits at All Seasons Hotels were so popular with guests that they started mass-producing them as hotel merchandise.
“Check-out gifts”: It’s become trendy to give guests small gifts when they check out—local snacks, toiletry kits, luggage tags, etc. Think Yunnan’s mushroom buns or floral pastries, or Jingdezhen’s ceramic bracelets.
Splitting up services: Some hotels rent out public spaces for meetings or small parties, even to non-guests. Others sell gym memberships because people find hotel gyms more cost-effective than professional fitness centers.
Of course, how profitable these efforts will be remains to be seen. But what I want to highlight isn’t the methods themselves—it’s the mindset behind them:
They are rewriting their own instruction manual.
Think about it: if you run a business and see fewer and fewer customers, what do you usually do? Traditionally, you either lower prices to attract more customers or innovate with something completely new. But innovation is hard, and lowering prices often leads to a race to the bottom, with shrinking profits for everyone.
But maybe there’s another path: rewrite your instruction manual like these hotels. A hotel used to mean just accommodation. Now, it means street food, check-out gifts, afternoon teas for seniors, and more. They’re still using the same assets—the same kitchens, the same chefs, the same suppliers—just aiming them at new targets.
The long-term results are uncertain, but the possibilities revealed by these experiments are worth paying attention to.
Sure! Here’s a natural English translation of the whole passage:
First of all, the most direct effect is that it might attract more people.
Marketing expert Mr. Song Xiaoma once made an observation: the primary task of offline stores is to make passersby slow down. For many offline businesses today, the biggest challenge isn’t how to make money—it’s how to get people to stop and take a look.
In the past, vendors used to shout, “Don’t miss it as you pass by!” But before you can avoid missing it, you first have to pass by. Now, that whole “pass by” scenario is disappearing.
Just look at the streets today. What are people doing? Staring down at their phones. And even when they look up, they’re rushing by. So the first problem offline stores need to solve isn’t “how to sell,” but “how to be seen.” Just as online products focus on click-through rates, offline stores need to focus on stop-and-look rates.
From this perspective, five-star hotels setting up stalls might be solving exactly this problem. Normally, if you walk past a five-star hotel, would you stop? No.
But if there’s a little food stall outside, it’s a different story. A 5 RMB bun, an 8 RMB bowl of cold noodles—these low-cost, high-frequency items make people feel, “Hey, this place has something to do with me.” Buy takeout today, come in for a real meal tomorrow—that possibility increases.
This process is like building a real-life version of a sales funnel.
For example, here’s a personal observation: there’s a street in Beijing called Niujie that has suddenly become an internet-famous food street in recent years. Almost every restaurant there has opened a separate takeout counter: full meals for dine-in customers, snacks for takeout.
If you drive past Niujie, you’ll notice a stark contrast: outside the street, everything looks normal, just an ordinary road. But the moment you enter Niujie, it’s packed with people. Almost every takeout stand has a long line. It’s like scrolling through short videos—one catches your attention, and suddenly you stop. Tourists hop out of their cars to take a look. That’s like clicking on a product link in a video. As they wander around, some end up buying snacks or sitting down for a meal. That’s like actually placing an order online.
See? It’s a real-life traffic funnel. Coming back to the five-star hotels, these street stalls and other experiments are trying to build their own funnel: turning attention into transactions, using small, casual interactions to build stronger connections.
And beyond meeting existing needs, these experiments might even uncover new customer demands.
For instance, many hotels now offer “hourly stays”—splitting a full day into several blocks for rest, with aromatherapy and zero-gravity beds included. Some people might ask, “Do you really need all that just for a few hours?” Surprisingly, yes.
Because nowadays, many hotel guests aren’t travelers—they’re locals. They don’t come to sleep; they come for solitude. According to Trip.com, in 2023, spending on non-lodging hotel services at Atour Hotels increased by 230%, and 67% came from middle-aged women aged 35–50. Their main goal? Peace and quiet for a few hours.
A recent survey by NetEase Data found that for middle-aged women, the top stress-relief method was staying in a hotel, followed by traveling and shopping. They don’t do much there—maybe order takeout, watch a show, or simply rest.
As Sanlian Life Lab put it, “Hotels have become the Disneyland for middle-aged women.” They look for a nearby hotel with good service and ambiance, book a few hours, and enjoy uninterrupted time just for themselves.
For many of them, daily life means juggling work and family. Even on holidays, they’re busy with kids or housework. At home, family members might call on them anytime; at the office, colleagues might interrupt anytime; cafés are too noisy, full of strangers coming and going.
Looking around, one of the best places for true solitude might just be a hotel. Close the door, shut off your phone, draw the curtains, order your favorite food, and for once, the time and space are entirely yours.
And although we used women as examples, the same logic might apply to men too. For hotels, this adds a new line to their “instruction manual”: not just a temporary lodging space, but also a private, interruption-free retreat.
In other words, the assets remain the same—but a new way of using them can create new value.
This logic may apply in other industries too. Take law, for example: at its core, legal training builds the ability to quickly interpret rules and act accordingly. That skill isn’t just for lawsuits; it has many applications. Or archaeology: people think it’s niche, but its skills—research and deduction—are valuable in many fields.
There’s a story about a teacher who gave students barometers and asked them to measure a building’s height. The scientific way was to measure air pressure at the ground and the top, then calculate the height. But there’d be slight errors. Some students tried rulers or other tools to fix the problem.
One student did something different: he gave the barometer to the building’s janitor and asked for the exact height directly—in effect, using the barometer as currency to buy the answer.
It’s like the saying: “When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” The problem isn’t the tool itself, but how we think about it. If you hit a bottleneck, instead of only seeking external help, maybe you can rewrite the “instruction manual” for your own skills. That might open up unexpected new paths.
Links:
"Chengdu's first Hilton hotel sold for USD 69 million," 2/24/2025 https://www.chinatravelnews.com/article/186030
"Why China's high-end hotels are setting up food stalls outside their doors" https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/why-chinas-high-end-hotels-are-setting-up-food-stalls-outside-their-doors