They've even let a new member into the club: The Peninsula Shanghai hotel, which bookends the northern curve of the Bund, was the first new building here in six decades.
When a bellman in a Shanghai hotel advised me to get a breakfast coupon from Lashou.com, a Chinese group-buying site, for less than half the price, I knew that social commerce had gotten into the hearts and minds of Chinese consumers.
If you go into a hotel in Shanghai or Beijing, the business travelers you see are just as likely to be Germans as Americans.
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They financed some of Shanghai's finest colonial architecture, including the magnificent Children's Palace (formerly the Kadoorie estate, Marble Hall), the art deco Peace Hotel (then the Cathay Hotel) and Shanghai Mansions, a Sassoon building that was used to process, and illegally house at times, hundreds of refugees.
Luxury hotels and clubhouses, such as the lavish Cathay Hotel and the opulent Shanghai Club, lined the western bank of the Huangpu River.
One high-profile deal involves its purchase in late 2012 of a grade-A office and five-star hotel complex in downtown Shanghai from a distressed local developer.
Charlie Chaplin spent his honeymoon in the hotel after marrying Paulette Goddard in Shanghai in 1936.
"We want to make people feel as if they are home, " says Wei Cheng, a hotel manager in Hangzhou, near Shanghai, although few Chinese homes have Day-Glo walls.
In Shanghai, where we assumed management of an existing hotel, the process began prior to our flag being raised.
The hotel, renamed the Langham Yangtze Boutique Shanghai, has 96 rooms and suites and features new Deco-inspired interiors -- along with modern amenities such as a spa.
WSJ: Touring Asia's Art Deco Gems in Shanghai and Napier, New Zealand
For instance, Shanghai city officials pressed the state-run company that owns the Peace Hotel, an Art Deco icon, to undertake a multimillion-dollar renovation.
WSJ: Touring Asia's Art Deco Gems in Shanghai and Napier, New Zealand
Also trying to cater to demand from Chinese buyers, Shanghai-based Greenland Group said in March it bought a residential and hotel project in Sydney from Canadian firm Brookfield Asset Management Inc.
One of the clearest examples of the Shanghai Deco style is the old Bank of China headquarters building next to the Peace Hotel on the Bund.
WSJ: Touring Asia's Art Deco Gems in Shanghai and Napier, New Zealand
In contrast, most Asian hotel chains, such as Shangri-La Asia, Mandarin-Oriental, and Hongkong and Shanghai Hotels (which holds the Peninsula brand), own and manage their own hotels.
It now attracts big-name hotel brands like the Hyatt, whose famous VUE bar has one of the best city views in Shanghai.
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