www.iht.com By the time the Beijing Olympics get into gear during the summer of 2008, residents of big and booming cities in China may have become just a little bit blasأƒآ© about the opening of yet another premier-grade hotel. Many industry experts estimate that by the end of next year, every week will witness the grand ribbon-cutting festivities of a new "luxury" hotel in China, claiming to be the utmost in Western five-star quality.

Perhaps no other nation will experience the kind of growth in ultra-elite accommodation that the mainland is expecting in the run-up to 2008. The Games, after all, are seen as a pinnacle of the country's ongoing coming-out party on the world political, economic and cultural stage. By some counts, local and foreign hotel groups are planning to open thousands, if not tens of thousands, of new properties in the next decade. Tens if not hundreds of thousands of qualified managers will be needed.

Tony Tse, a senior official with the School of Hotel and Tourism Management at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, says the situation in "China is very unique because of the Olympics and the continuing improvement in the economy. There is a huge amount of energy."

For top executives of the international hospitality trade, the question on everyone's mind is: Will there be enough skilled personnel to fuel the burgeoning luxury hotel industry on the mainland? It is a question that makes Tse sigh. As the school's director of industry partnerships, he deals with tourism organizations from across the border every day, almost all seeking help. "Many hotels in China come to us. They all express concern with hiring the best staff," he says. "It is not just marble and carpets. It is about the tea you serve." And, most important, how the tea - or the coffee - is served.

Tay Beng Koon of the Shangri-La group, hotels and resorts giant, says: "The 'hardware' is the same. Anyone can build a hotel. What makes a difference is the 'software.' What makes guests come back is our people."

To be considered truly luxury, the small things matter, like the nuances of how to pour a cup of coffee. "It must be only 80 percent full," says Tay, who is from Singapore and has been in the hotel human resource business for 18 years. In any country with only decades of experience in five-star accommodation, such details come as second nature only to graduates of elite hotel institutes and finishing schools.

In a place like China, training enough staff in mere months to live and breathe luxury standards remains a Herculean task. In the 1980s, the best lodging options for VIP travelers to the mainland were government-run enterprises led by unsmiling Communist cadres. But ready or not, the Olympics is merely three short years away. So hotel operators are doing what they can to quickly create legions of managers.

One solution has been to bring in the know-how of long-established hotel schools like Hong Kong Polytechnic. In recent months, Tse has put together short-term programs for several hospitality groups operating in China. For the owners of the Garden Hotel in Guangzhou, a favorite of local and foreign businessmen in Southern China, Hong Kong Polytechnic designed a master's degree curriculum for staff members.

Another strategy is to focus on a chain's existing executive training programs and on giving students international work experience. Starwood, for example, plans to own 34 hotels in China by 2008, up from 19 today, by increasing the number of mainland enrollees in its "Leadership University." Michael Pross, Starwood's area director of human resources - the operator of such brands as St. Regis, Westin and Sheraton - says the chain has sent 17 Chinese employees to live, work and study for 15 months at its luxury hotels in Singapore, its regional headquarters. Dozens more Starwood managers are expected to follow.

The extreme approach to the Chinese luxury challenge? To build an entire hotel school from scratch. Last December, Shangri-La inaugurated its Shangri-La Academy, a 5,870-square-meter, or 19,250-square-foot, tourism services institute on the campus of Oriental University in Hebei Province, an hour from Beijing. "Come 2007, we should be opening a hotel a month in China," says Tay, the school's director of academic studies. The Shangri-La group is already China's largest operator of luxury hotels. In five years, it intends to add 41 hotels to the 40 it already has, and it also plans to double its work force.

Shangri-La Academy has so far churned out 463 graduates. In August, Tay will begin to accept 16- to 18-year-olds who have finished secondary school. "They will be a blank piece of paper," she says.