Given time, though, Hengqin Island is likely to grow
into a major entertainment centre for southern China.
Already, those involved or observing its development are
dubbing it “the Orlando of China”.
“They have lots of empty space, very good traffic
infrastructure with the [Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau]
bridge, they have a high-speed train and their own
airport, which can be developed. Basically, there’s a lot of
infrastructure and a lot of land,” says Dr Markus Schuckert,
an assistant professor at the School of Hotel and Tourism
Management at Hong Kong Polytechnic University.
In a May 2019 visit to the Chimelong Hengqin Bay
Hotel, Business Traveller Asia-Pacific toured the expansive
1,000-plus room property. Eight towering dolphin statues
encircle a luminescent red anemone statue in the lobby.
At the rear of the property, in front of the expansive
swimming pool, is a smaller pool housing real-life dolphins
for guests to observe. Even on the overcast day on which
we visited, plenty of guests were poolside, with children
floating in the pool on inflatable swans and flamingoes. A
vast, then-empty car park opposite the hotel was expected
to be filled with the shiny new automobiles of the Chinese
middle classes come summer.
The property is just one of the hotels in the Chimelong
International Ocean Tourist Resort, owned by Chimelong
Group, a Chinese theme-park operator active in southern
China since 1989. (The company also has a major tourist
resort in Guangzhou.)
Guests at the resort on Hengqin can also choose
to stay at the themed Chimelong Circus Hotel or
Chimelong Penguin Hotel. (A fourth hotel is also under
construction.) From these, hotel guests have easy access
to the Chimelong Ocean Kingdom theme park, which
features rides, a 5D theatre and animal exhibitions.
“Actually, Ocean Kingdom is one of the best parks
in China because they imported a lot of know-how
from Hong Kong and Macau. It’s really one of the first
homegrown parks which really levers on an international
scale,” says Dr Schuckert. “The guys who are running
Chimelong [Ocean Kingdom] are partially from Disney
and partially from Ocean Park [a theme park in Hong
Kong ], so they are coming with a solid know-how in
the business.”
Another major tourism development in Hengqin is
Novotown. At the time of writing, Novotown, which
is being developed by Hong Kong company Lai Sun
Group, is still very much a building site and feels like it’s
in the middle of nowhere. But later this year, the 260,000
sqm site is set to be transformed into a multipurpose
entertainment and meetings space.
Features will include Lionsgate Entertainment World,
which will be Asia’s first movie-themed indoor experience
centre and aims to bring to life some of the most successful
Lionsgate productions, including The Hunger Games, The
Twilight Saga, The Divergent Series, Now You See Me, Gods
of Eg ypt and Escape Plan.
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