Can Orient-Express succeed in China?

It is hard to be a luxury brand these days without a Chinese presence, so Orient-Express – that most romantic of brands de luxe – is in Shanghai this week looking for a hotel to buy or manage.

In a country obsessed with the best things the renminbi can buy, from Chateau Latour to chateaux to live in, Orient-Express ought to have a bright future. The only problem is the train connection.

Orient-Express is actually a top-end hotel chain more than anything else, with boutique properties like the historic Mount Nelson Hotel in Cape Town, a ‘remembrance of things past’ kind of place at the southern tip of Africa.

But the brand it trades on is inextricably linked with that most iconic of train journeys, the London to Venice Orient Express (which, once a year, goes all they way to Istanbul).

But in China, trains are hardly viewed as places to a) relax and enjoy the scenery b) eat sumptuously c) spend £1,800 per person for a journey of one day and one night (the price from London to Venice).

In China, trains are more closely associated in the public mind – especially at this time of year when tens of millions are migrating home for Chinese new year – with smelly loos and crowded waiting rooms.

Last year’s Wenzhou train crash was one of the seminal political events of the year – and not one that will have improved the image of train travel.

Still, Orient-Express is bent on buying or operating a property in China as the best form of advertisement to lure outbound Chinese travelers to its overseas resorts, hotels and, yes, trains, says Filip Boyen, chief operating officer, who spent Tuesday shopping for real estate in Shanghai.

Good luck to him. Shanghai is awash with five star hotels already, not all of them stellar success stories. Standing out from the luxury crowd in Shanghai is hard enough at the best of times – without trying to do it by donning a train conductor’s chapeau.