Hangzhou, June 1, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Recently, New Century Hotels & Resorts and Zhongnan Animation jointly announced the launch of a strategic partnership themed “Cross-Industry Integration Opens a New Model.” Founded in 1988 with the opening of Zhejiang New Century Xiaoshan Hotel, New Century Hotels & Resorts now ranks among the world’s top 30 hotel groups and is the second largest high-star chain hotel group in China. Established in 2004, Zhongnan Animation has grown into one of China’s largest original animation companies and is among the few leading enterprises capable of operating the full animation industry chain. This collaboration will leverage the strengths and resources of both industries to advance the integration of the animation sector and the hotel tourism industry. In the future, both parties will aim for “shared synergy,” engaging in deep cooperation in areas such as integrated communication resources, unified membership channels, and bundled product sales. They will work together to build brands centered around users, ensure seamless information connectivity, establish joint big data, and coordinate services to better serve consumers.
During the 2016 Mid-Autumn Festival, New Century Hotels & Resorts will debut children’s mooncakes themed around the “Happy Happy YoYo” animation, marking the first application of this original animated character from Zhongnan Animation in the hotel industry. These themed mooncakes are exclusively designed for young guests, featuring “Happy Happy YoYo” animation elements on both the packaging and the variety of mooncake styles. The mooncakes will gradually become available for purchase at hotels under the New Century Hotels & Resorts brand starting in July this year.
In additionto the upcoming “Happy Happy YoYo” animation-themed mooncakes, the two parties will also introduce anime-themed family rooms. After a trial run in Hangzhou, these rooms will be expanded to other New Century Hotels in different cities, further exploring multi-faceted combinations of anime-themed family content with the hotel tourism industry. A representative from Zhongnan Animation stated that the development of the animation industry requires not only television and new media broadcasts but also more grounded, diversified ways for animated characters to enter children’s lives. This collaboration with New Century Hotels & Resorts, leveraging the brand’s strong market presence in the industry, will allow original animated characters to enter the tourism market in differentiated ways, maximizing value for both parties.
A representative from New Century Hotels & Resorts mentioned that after 28 years of steady development, the group now manages or has contracts for 200 hotels and boasts a loyal membership base of over 3.4 million. In 2014, New Century successively launched four themed guestrooms—“Coffee Tales,” “Music Workshop,” “Loving Home,” and “Scholar’s Abode”—exclusively designed to provide guests with a “home away from home” experience. This collaboration with Zhongnan Animation will further promote parent-child tourism and the animation market, offering guests more diverse parent-child experience products and creating a more enjoyable lifestyle.
The cross-industry collaboration between New Century Hotels & Resorts and Zhongnan Animation opens broad prospects for future shared brand promotion resources, membership cooperation, and market development. The two parties will complement each other for mutual benefit and advancement, and in the future, the two groups will also focus on innovating demands at the levels of tourism and cultural entertainment to develop new collaborative projects.