As Chinese businesses seek a return to business as usual following the outbreak of COVID-19, buyers of premium imported seafood are proceeding tentatively, being careful not to overcommit in case consumers remain wary of eating out in restaurants or splurging on a gourmet meal.
Several high-end hotel chains have reopened across the country, many offering special deals on access to their seafood buffets. That’s the case for the Hilton Hotel in Zhengzhou, in central China, which is offering a trio of salmon fillets from Chile, Faroe Islands, and Norway for CNY 148 (USD 20.70, EUR 19.20), compared to the “normal” CNY 328 (USD 45.90, EUR 42.64) rate per adult (which also covers one child). This “post-outbreak feast” also features local oysters and Indian shrimp, according to a staff member reached by SeafoodSource. Customer traffic has been “increasing,” she said.
The Pullman Hotel in coastal Fuzhou, which offers an all-you-can-eat buffet that includes imported salmon, crab, and lobster, as well as local crayfish, has begun offering a discounted price, matching the rate of the Zhengzhou Hilton. And the Courtyard by Marriot in Xi’an has cut the per-person rate on its salmon- and crustacean-heavy seafood buffet from CNY 228 (USD 31.92, EUR 29.64) to CNY 178 (USD 24.90, EUR 23.10) as it looks to encourage customers to return.
Discounting by hotels will probably be necessary, given the country’s GDP shrunk in the first quarter by 6.8 percent. A big chunk of that drop occurred at retail. Retail sales dropped 16 percent year-on-year in March, while average disposable income was down 12.5 percent in real terms in the first quarter of 2019, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.
COVID-19 has posed China with twin, interrelated problems in plummeting external demand for Chinese exports as well as deflationary pressures, according to Alicia Garcia Herrero, chief economist for Asia at French investment bank Natixis. Garcia Herrero wrote in a research note, shared with SeafoodSource, that she thinks China will be “under pressure” in restoring consumer demand to keep up with a much faster recovery of production, leading to the specter of deflation.
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