Some 20 years ago, an award-winning Tibetan documentary filmmaker, wanting to share the Tibetan culture and help guests understand how the locals pursue and find their source of happiness, decided to turn his ancestral home in Shangri-La into a hotel. Today, Baima Duoji’s Songtsam (“Paradise”) luxury boutique hotel brand has 13 properties open in Tibet and more than 30 more on the drawing board.
“Songtsam’s mission is to inspire our guests with the diverse ethnic groups and cultures of the region and to understand how the local people pursue and understand happiness, bringing Songtsam guests closer to discovering their own Shangri La,” Baima told HOTELS during an April interview. “At the same time, Songtsam has a strong commitment to sustainability and the preservation of the essence of Tibetan culture by supporting the economic development of the local communities and the environmental conservation within Tibet and Yunnan.”
Baima was born in Kna Village in Shangri-La, Yunnan province. This is where the Tibetan community gathers on foot to visit the Ganden Sumtseling Monastery. While working as a camera assistant for British director Phil Agland’s documentary, China: Beyond the Clouds, Baima took the opportunity to do further study at Beijing Film Academy.
While attending the Cannes TV festival in France, Baima first became familiar with the concept of boutique hotels and decided to create similar hotels where guests could feel and experience local culture while staying in a limited space.
Then, in 2000, while still working as a filmmaker, Baima returned to Shangri-La where he converted his ancestral home into the first Songtsam boutique hotel, Songtsam Shangri-La Lvgu Lodge. From the architectural techniques to the decorative style, it was ingeniously infused with Tibetan cultural elements to create a “home away from home” hidden in the Himalayas.
By 2001, Baima devoted himself entirely to working on expanding the Songtsam collection of luxury boutique properties. He successfully brought together nature, outdoor adventure, village life and local countryside customs to form what became known as the first “Songtsam Circuit.” Named the Songtsam Yunnan & Tibet Route project, Baima developed the Lijiang Linka and Lhasa Linka retreats. These two hotels were announced as the starting and ending points of the route. At the same time, Baima initiated plans for a second circuit, the Songtsam Sichuan & Tibet Route. When the Mangkang Rumei Lodge, Ranwu Laigu Lodge, and Bomi Linka were opened, the second circuit was launched. The new Songtsam Yunnan & Tibet Route, merged the Ancient Tea Horse Road (also known as the Asia Silk Road), G214 (Yunnan-Tibet highway), G318 (Sichuan-Tibet highway), and the Tibetan Plateau road tour into one.
Baima has since created Songtsam Tours, a Virtuoso Asia Pacific Preferred Supplier, to provide guests an opportunity to curate their own experiences by combining stays at its different hotels and lodges.
As Songtsam further expands, Baima draws on his intimate knowledge of the very remote but spectacular scenic spots in Tibet and Yunnan Province, to select locations for the next lodges and retreats.
The most recent opening in March 2021 was the Songtsam Lodge Namcha Barwa located in Dalin Village in Tibet, with a spectacular view of the famous Namcha Barwa snow mountain, the Father of Tibetan Mountains, which rises 25,531.5 feet above sea level. To promote the development of the village, Songtsam has committed to contributing US$30 from every room night sold to the village. The goal is to help improve the Dalin Village’s living standards and support local development.
Today, in many of his hotels, 95% of his hotel employees are local and there remains an integral focus on protecting nature and indigenous species. Architecture and design fits into the often-untouched local environment and each lodge is infused with the founder’s private antique collection and locally produced art works.
HOTELS learned more from Baima and his strategy to develop Songtsam in this Q&A:
HOTELS: What are your yet-to-achieve goals for the Songtsam hotel brand, and do you plan to wander outside your region in China for further development?
Baima Duoji: I think Songtsam has just started the journey. This is a lifetime task. The previous 20 years have been accumulation. Now it’s time to develop. I hope Songtsam can become a company that will truly drive the Tibetan villages and even the villages in western China in the future to become a world-class brand connecting the remote villages and hidden land. Songtsam is doing local culture, not only promoting local culture, we don’t limit us in Tibetan culture, so we will definitely go to more suitable places where Songtsam is needed.
H: What you want to accomplish not yet done (new goals)?
BD: There are too many. As mentioned earlier, Songtsam will go to the places in western China that suit and need us. I will go to Northwest China and go to the Silk Road. I also want to develop the hotel from Chang’an, China, to Samarkand, Uzbekistan, all the way.
Don’t worry, let’s be firmly and go steady.
H: How were your hotels performing pre-pandemic, during the pandemic and today? How are bookings looking going forward?
BD: Last year was a very special year. All industries have been more or less affected by the pandemic, especially tourism industry. According to incomplete statistics, more than 30,000 travel agencies across China closed down in 2020. But in every cold winter, there will always be flowers that are still blooming. In 2020, Songtsam achieved the best sales performance in history. At the beginning of the pandemic, Songtsam also encountered difficulties. Its 11 hotels and travel agencies were fully closed since January. During the two peak seasons, which were originally fully booked, the bookings for Spring Festival holiday and the Peach Blossom Festival were all canceled until gradually resuming business in May. However, starting from the end of May, Songtsam soon reached its peak season. Many hotels continued to be fully booked, with the longest full room cycle for 118 days. As of the end of September, with four months total income, it exceeded that of the year of 2019. At the level of the whole year, the total revenue increased by 68% compared with 2019, and the revenue for the seven months of operation increased by 164% compared with the same period last year, reaching the highest in history.
H: Who are your investment partners?
BD: Songtsam has not formally raised foreign capital. My current investors are all individuals, and they are all Songtsam guests. After they stayed with Songtsam, they liked it very much and they took the initiative to invest some money with us. I am still an absolute majority shareholder. For better development last year, we introduced Qiongyou travel team lead by former Lonely Planet Chinese market representatives and the Le travel team, China’s one of the best outbound high-end travel team. This year, there should be plans to formally raise funds for the market.
H: Can you explain how your operating model (hotel staff, sales staff, development team) is unique and what has most helped it succeed?
BD: The uniqueness of Songtsam comes from Songtsam’s mission: Pursuing Shambhala, inner peace and tranquility. Songtsam’s corporate mission is to pursue the source of happiness. The corporate culture emphasizes altruism.
Our employees recognize from the heart that ‘the best and most direct way to get happiness is to give others happiness’ and wish to work hard for the common mission. We emphasized the atmosphere of home, and employees and guests also felt it.
H: What do you love about being a hotelier?
BD: I traveled to all kinds of beautiful places to select locations, and each hotel I create is an artwork to me. When I saw many ideas can be realized, everyone liked the experience brought by these efforts, and the personal development of employees brought by the development of Songtsam, all these make me feel happy and joyful.
H: What challenges you the most being a hotelier, and how are you trying to address it?
BD: The biggest challenge should be how to transform from a family business to a modern corporate management system, which can make things more efficient and policies more reasonable, while maintaining a family atmosphere. In a word – how to achieve internationalization and modernization of the back-end, and personalization of the front-end.
H: Can you offer an example of how you have successfully supported the economic development of one of the local communities where your hotels are based?
BD: The village where Songtsam was born, Kena Village, is a great example. Twenty years ago, it was a semi-agricultural and semi-pastoral way of life and production. Twenty years later, the main industry here has been transformed into cultural tourism. Some people are employed in hotel services in Songtsam, some people open Tibetan home visits as must-have experience for Songtsam guests, and some people start to provide eco-food to hotels.
Some followed the example of Songtsam and opened a bed and breakfast hotel and became a tourist practitioner. Under the influence and drive of Songtsam, a small village with 98 families with 421 people now have 10 homestays, three restaurants, 70 people work in hotels, and more than 60% of the villagers are directly or indirectly involved in the tourism industry.
We have a policy of insisting on hiring locals to give more opportunities to ordinary local people. At present, 92% of Songtsam’s 636 employees are locals. This approach also makes Songtsam’s impact on mountain villages and the effect of improving the rural economy sustainable.
H: What do you think the more traditional hotel development community is getting right, and where do you think it needs to improve?
BD: Believe in your own motivation, believe in the value of time, insist on doing things that your heart recognizes, don’t blindly follow others, work hard on the cause, and follow the effect brought by the cause. Perseverance will always bring good results.
H: How and where are you finding happiness, meaning in work today?
BD: Work itself makes me happy, and practicing at work makes me happy. What we do is to pursue the source of happiness. Therefore, happiness is actually everywhere.
H: What matters to you in business now beside making money, or is that the driver?
BD: Making money is never a motivation. To me, hotel and travel are my way of communicating with the world and my own way of practicing. These are not motivations.
H: What is your message to the hotel world?
BD: Be patient, don’t worry.