Fairmont Hotels & Resorts has officially launched its global brand campaign, Make Special Happen, in China – marking the campaign’s arrival in one of the brand’s most strategically significant markets and introducing a portfolio of China-specific curated experiences designed to translate its international positioning into locally resonant moments.
The China launch was celebrated at Fairmont Xiamen, the brand’s newest Greater China property, with a signature dining event that offered guests a foretaste of the campaign’s philosophy: ceremony, discovery and the sense of being genuinely seen.
The campaign behind the China launch
Make Special Happen was unveiled globally in May 2025 – Fairmont’s first new brand campaign in four years and, by the brand’s own account, a significant repositioning moment. Developed by creative agency King & Partners and directed by filmmaker Jean Claude Thibaut, the campaign was shot at the iconic Fairmont Royal York in Toronto, with a visual language that evokes classic cinema and the refined elegance of an earlier era.
The creative draws directly on Fairmont’s heritage as a host of history-making occasions – from the signing of the United Nations Charter in San Francisco to Truman Capote’s Black and White Ball in New York and John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s ‘bed in for peace’ in Montreal. The campaign’s argument is that this legacy of making occasions feel genuinely special is not a historical footnote but a living service culture – one that can and should manifest in daily, personal moments, not only grand events.
Omer Acar, CEO of Fairmont Raffles, has described it as part of the brand’s DNA rather than a marketing exercise. “Fairmont hotels are social epicentres that blend genuine encounters with the heart of the action, creating vibrant spaces where communities gather,” he said. “Occasions are celebrated, milestones are marked, and history is made every day at our properties globally.”
Alongside the campaign, Fairmont introduced a collection of bookable experiences under the banner Special Happens…, organised into four categories: After Dark, In the Wild, Around the Table and In the Spotlight. Each category frames a different dimension of memorable hospitality, from nature-based adventures to culinary rituals and cultural immersions.
The Xiamen launch event
The China launch centred on the Around the Table category – and the event at Fairmont Xiamen illustrated precisely why that framing matters. Rather than a standard press dinner or brand reception, the evening was structured as a curated journey in which each course deepened a sense of ceremony and discovery.
The defining moment came at the dessert course: servers personally ignited a flame before each guest to unveil what the brand described as a final “treasure,” accompanied by a scroll featuring classic lines from films shot at Fairmont properties worldwide. The gesture was deliberately cinematic – a nod to the campaign’s film heritage DNA – and deliberately personal, creating a pause in the evening that made each guest feel individually acknowledged rather than part of a collective audience.
It is a small but instructive example of what the campaign is trying to institutionalise: the shift from service as transaction to service as authorship, where the team designs a moment rather than simply delivers a product.
What Make Special Happen looks like across China
The China rollout introduces experiences tailored to each Fairmont property’s location and cultural context – a deliberate departure from one-size-fits-all luxury programming. Fairmont now operates seven properties across Greater China, in Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Kunshan, Sanya, Wuhan and Xiamen, with a further pipeline that includes Dalian.
At Fairmont Beijing, the Make Special Happen experience takes guests on a Great Wall helicopter tour – a format that combines access and spectacle in a way that no standard excursion can replicate. At Fairmont Wuhan, the focus is cultural: a Hanfu evening at the Yellow Crane Tower, one of China’s most celebrated historic landmarks, dressing guests in traditional Tang dynasty-era garments and connecting them to Hubei’s deep cultural heritage. At the Fairmont Peace Hotel, one of Shanghai’s most storied addresses on the Bund, and at Fairmont Sanya Haitang Bay, distinct experiences are being developed that reflect each property’s individual character and guest profile.
The pattern across all four – and across the global Special Happens… collection more broadly – is consistent: anchor the experience in something genuinely specific to the place, involve the team as designers of the moment rather than executors of a script, and give the guest something that cannot be replicated by booking independently online.
The China market context
The timing of the China rollout is deliberate. Domestic luxury travel in China has accelerated since the post-pandemic reopening, with Chinese travellers increasingly choosing high-quality domestic experiences over outbound travel. At the same time, international luxury brands operating in China face a market that is both sophisticated and sceptical – one where generic prestige signalling carries less weight than authentic, locally relevant experiences.
Fairmont’s China estate, built over more than a decade, gives the brand the geographic spread to make a campaign like this land with substance rather than aspiration. Seven operational properties across distinct regional markets – the commercial capital, the political capital, the coastal leisure south, the cultural heartland of Hubei, the tech-adjacent hub of Chengdu – means the campaign can be personalised at scale rather than activated as a single national event.
For luxury hospitality operators watching China’s competitive landscape, the Make Special Happen rollout offers a clear strategic read: in a market where the guest is increasingly experienced and demanding, the competitive advantage lies not in the room or the restaurant alone, but in the moments that neither algorithm nor competitor can anticipate or replicate. Fairmont’s bet is that those moments, designed with intent and delivered with craft, are what make a brand genuinely irreplaceable.
