what is a relevant issue in china's hospitality industry?

There are several issues in fact. Hospitality industry was virtually absent in China till 1978 because Communist Party policies did not allow foreign tourists to visit. When they started at the time of Den Xiaoping they started from a zero base.

Today the key issues that they face are
1. Lack of trained professionals
2. Lack of established quality standards
3. Service guarantee mechanism is absent
4. Weak in Marketing
5. Indistinctive product design
6. Insufficient government support

You can also surmise that the slump in global economy has impacted hospitality industry as well and room occupancy in hotels has suffered in 2008-09, forcing the hotels to rethink their business strategy.

You can find these links helpful
http://www.chinahotelseminar.com.cn/download/china_hotel_market_outlook.pdf
http://geog.hku.hk/undergrad/geog2086/GEOG2086-3-09.ppt
http://www.hotelschool.cornell.edu/chr/pdf/showpdf/chr/research/enzmanagerstopost.pdf
http://www.wttc.org/bin/file/original_file/jim_pilarski.ppt

Another link from Hong Kong University
http://geog.hku.hk/undergrad/geog2086/



Enjoy!!

I think the biggest concerns are the lack of an "across the board" standards and the language/communication ability of staff.

With tourism budding in China, more and more hotels and restaurants are built. However, there isn't an across-the-board set of standards that govern these hotels and restaurants, ie. hotel-rating system, staff training program, etc.

Another common problem is the inability of staff to communicate efficiently with the guests. That's why prior to the Olympics there was a big wave of "business English" classes catered towards tourism sectors and many companies paid their staff to take additional English lessons.