【Depth Focus】Hotel+IP! Shenzhen Overseas Chinese Town InterContinental Hotel explodes into the metaverse

In 1982, InterContinental Hotel Shenzhen OCT emerged from the wave of reform and opening up, with the genes of innovation, creation, and imagination deeply engraved in its soul. From the first five-star hotel in China with a “Spanish style” theme to today’s “Wonderful Voyager” AI-themed parent-child room, from exotic customs, thematic culture, to IP stories, and Metaverse technology, InterContinental Hotel Shenzhen OCT continues to innovate, continuously expanding its functional boundaries, resonating with the times, advancing with society, and shaping a new paradigm for the diversified and distinctive development of the hotel industry.

Theme-driven, setting a new industry benchmark

Reform and opening up, the hotel was established. The predecessor of the Intercontinental Hotel in OCT Harbour, Shenzhen was the Shenzhen Bay Hotel, which was established in 1982. It was jointly built by OCT Group and Hong Kong China Travel Service Hotel Management Limited. It was the first tourism resort hotel operated through Sino-foreign cooperation. As the first hotel in the city to provide comprehensive services at that time, Shenzhen Bay Hotel once became the preferred choice for foreign investors and national leaders temporarily residing in Shenzhen, and was also known as the ‘Whampoa Military Academy’ of the hotel industry in Shenzhen.

Focus on the theme, rebuild and upgrade. In 2006, the Shenzhen Bay Hotel was upgraded to the InterContinental Hotel at OCT Harbor, Shenzhen. During this period, the hotel has noticed that ‘themed features’ are a key strategy to increase the hotel’s differentiation advantage and enhance its core competitiveness. The transformation of InterContinental Hotel at OCT Harbor, Shenzhen is based on Spanish architectural style, from themed guest rooms, dreamy ballrooms, pillarless grand banquet halls, to the iconic sailboat, Caribbean-style gardens, comprehensively incorporating Spanish elements to create the first domestically built Spanish-themed hotel to platinum five-star standards, setting off a wave of themed cultural hotels in China.

In addition, the hotel further enriches the ‘theme’ connotation: using the old laundry room to build the Hua Art Museum, becoming the first hotel in the country to have a ‘design art museum’; retaining the exterior wall of the Shenzhen Bay Hotel built in 1982, and the new building wall ‘2006’ complement each other, showing the alternation of new and old, and becoming an important witness to the development history of hotels in the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone.

Stay true to innovation and continue to explore. For over 40 years, the InterContinental Hotel at OCT Harbour in Shenzhen has maintained excellent standards and quality in hospitality, solidifying its core business advantage and leading the hotel industry. Staying true to its roots while embracing innovation, in 2023, the InterContinental Hotel at OCT Harbour in Shenzhen will target the family market and expand with a Spanish theme, upgrading to create the ‘Wonderful Utopia’ children’s growth center, which integrates culture, entertainment, and education. The entire area will revolve around a maritime adventure, where young explorers will embark on a journey to find ‘Utopia’ aboard the ‘Nautilus’, with multiple leisure and amusement areas set up.

Since then, the “Spanish cultural theme” of InterContinental Shenzhen OCT has been further concretized, and the IP prototype of “Grand Voyage Adventure Story” has begun to appear.

IP leads and embraces the digital new wave

2024, embark on a new journey. After the launch of the ‘Wonderful Utopia’ received enthusiastic responses, with over 40,000 visits to the indoor club since its opening in January 2023. However, as time goes by, consumers’ demand for interactive and narrative experiences gradually rises, eagerly anticipating more new gameplay and creativity. Shenzhen OCT Intercontinental Hotel, with keen insight and proactive innovation, focuses on the MetaverseAI experience and collaborates with the new generation of Metaverse industry leader, Xiaoqian Technology, to integrate Depth with artificial intelligence and AI large model capabilities on the basis of the theme of ‘Wonderful Utopia’, deepening IP content, revitalizing IP roles, and upgrading to create the ‘Wonderful Pirate King’ IP theme experience. Depth empowers the hotel scene, once again extending the functional boundaries of the hotel.

Story building, rich IP. “Quirky Sea King” continues the theme of the Spanish Age of Discovery, and created the story of the first global journey in human history, featuring distinctive characters such as Captain Mac, First Mate JoJo, Chef Lucy, and parrot DiDi: passionate young Mac leads the Parrot Conch around the world, searching for the “Energy Gem” representing wealth and luck; composed and calm First Mate JoJo is the strong support behind the captain; stylish chef Lucy has extraordinary cooking talent, boundless creativity, and can heal everyone with her cuisine; cute parrot DiDi always perches on the captain’s shoulder, and will shout “Captain” for help when danger is spotted; the “arch-villain” Octopus Captain is the cursed pirate leader who has been adrift at sea for many years, wanting to steal the “Energy Gem” to lift the curse and return to land.

IP is the key, connecting the scenes. The “little adventurers” staying at the hotel will receive their exclusive “sailing permit” (themed room card) when checking in, and “board the ship” to join the maritime adventure team in the main cabin of the “Parrotfish” - parent-child themed guest room, and embark on an adventure with the story characters. Each story character is in charge of an AI interactive project. The “little adventurers” will draw nautical maps and promote story development through interactive conversations with the characters. After completing the interactive challenges, they will also receive exclusive honor certificates, providing a fulfilling sense of achievement.

Technology empowers and revolutionizes interaction. The ‘Wonderful Sailing King’ uses a highly intelligent digital human system driven by the GPT AI language model to accompany and guide the storyline throughout. During conversations, the system intelligently integrates knowledge of geography, history, astronomy, and cities; during interactions, the system will guide children to experience literature, painting, and music, three major AI creations in different stages, allowing children to learn through fun exploration and fully stimulate their perception and imagination. In terms of hardware, the hotel introduces MR (Mixed Reality technology) interactive mode, integrating hotel real scenes and architectural aesthetics through table displays, floor projections, and head-mounted spatial displays, creating an interactive feedback loop between the real world, virtual world, and guests, enhancing the realness of user experience and creating an exclusive visual experience.

From ‘theme’ to ‘IP’, Chuangxiang has always been on the road.

IP ignites the new engine of cultural and tourism integration. The theme is the initial stage of IP, often presented in the form of ‘atmospheric experience’, leaving consumers with a more abstract ‘impression’. IP then goes further on the basis of the theme, concretizing the theme into one or more character images, endowing them with unique personalities and matching story content, making them more specific, more vital existence. Consumers also gain a more in-depth emotional connection and spiritual sustenance.

In recent years, the country has vigorously promoted the integration of culture, tourism, and Depth, actively promoting the widespread application of technology in the cultural and tourism fields. The domestic cultural and tourism market has derived various emerging formats in response to the situation, and the operating model of ‘hotel + IP’ has emerged as a result. On the one hand, hotels provide cultural experiences and emotional value through IP, creating differentiated advantages, increasing hotel traffic, and improving occupancy rates. On the other hand, IP, as an abstract cultural symbol, also needs more concrete scenarios to break through the ‘dimensional wall’ and achieve offline immersive landing.

As a leader in the hotel industry and the inheritor of OCT’s ‘innovation’ gene, InterContinental Hotel Shenzhen OCT is partnering with Xiaoqian Technology to launch ‘Fun Voyage King’. This is not only another pioneering effort of OCT Hotels to explore innovative and excellent development paths for the future of the hotel industry, but also a solid step taken by OCT Group, as a central enterprise, in actively responding to the country’s call and embracing the emerging technological trends to promote industrial transformation and upgrading.

IP injection as a new driving force for enterprise development. In early 2024, OCT Group officially launched the ‘Star River Plan’, which is the OCT brand IP and digital development strategy. With the help of AIGC technology and relying on mobile internet social media, the plan aims to create internet popular IPs with independent intellectual property rights for OCT, and build the OCT Star River IP matrix and IP universe through the trilogy of ‘brand IP, digital IP, and digital IP industrialization’.

In addition to creating its own popular IP, OCT Group continues to explore event IPs such as ‘Amazing Toy Festival’ and ‘Phoenix Flower Carnival’, actively collaborating with popular IPs such as ‘Ultraman’ and ‘Light and Night Love’. It adopts multiple measures to continuously explore brand IP and digital development strategies, enhancing the creativity, fun, and interactivity of cultural and tourism activities, and enriching the supply of cultural and tourism consumption. ‘Wonderful Sailing King’, jointly created by Shenzhen OCT Intercontinental Hotel and Xiaoqian Technology, is also a vivid practice of using IP to release the multiplier effect of cultural and tourism integration, helping the sustainable and high-quality development of the Group’s cultural and tourism business in the face of new demands and seizing new opportunities.

InterContinental Hotel at OCT Harbour, Shenzhen will officially unveil the ‘Peculiar Voyage’ on December 9th. In the future, OCT Hotels will continue to introduce more new gameplay and creativity, persistently innovating and leading with quality, constantly revitalizing the hotel’s sustainable high-quality development vitality and competitiveness.

Source: Sina

Author: China Overseas Chinese Town Group Co., Ltd.