Hotel industry and travel news from around the Asia Pacific region; Six Chinese hotel groups create online distribution platform, BHMAsia expanding its presence in Bangkok, Best Western enters Bandung and more...

Best Western Enters Bandung

Best Western Hotels & Resorts is making its debut in Indonesia’s third largest city, Bandung, with the launch of Best Western Premier La Grande Hotel. The 193-room upscale hotel will be equipped with eight meeting rooms, a business center, a spa, a swimming pool, a fitness center and a restaurant. With this opening on December 1, 2015, Best Western’s portfolio across the Indonesian archipelago will stand at 16 hotels. In the past two years, Bandung has witnessed a substantial increase in its hotel inventory and the surplus supply has exerted downward pressure on its hotel performance; Bandung’s annual market-wide RevPAR is expected to drop by 5%, by year-end 2015. However, owing to the continued growth in domestic tourism on the back of a weakening Rupiah, the city’s hotel market is expected to recover in the medium term, with a forecasted increase in market-wide RevPAR by 9% in 2016.

BHMAsia Expanding Its Presence in Bangkok

Bespoke Hospitality Management (BHM) Asia has begun construction of its first hotel in Bangkok. The new X2 Vibe Onnut will feature 267 units, comprising of 145 hotel accommodations and 122 residences. Other facilities will include a  swimming pool, a restaurant, a fitness centre, a spa and 24-hour room service. Scheduled to open in Q4 2016, the hotel will be situated five minutes away from Onnut BTS sky train station, which provides access into central Bangkok’s Sukhumvit districts. The property will also offer easy access to the Suvarnabhumi International Airport via the Bangkok expressway. BHMAsia currently operates a collection of boutique hotels and resorts under its X2, X2 Vibe and Away brands. Besides this new property in Bangkok, new X2 Vibe hotels are being planned in several other destinations, such as, Koh Samui, Phuket and Pattaya.

Taj Group Concludes Its Management Contracts in Jodhpur and Ahmedabad

The Indian Hotels Company Limited, operating Taj Hotels Resorts & Palaces, announced that it will cease to manage the two Gateway Hotels in Jodhpur, Rajasthan and Ahmedabad, Gujarat, post the termination of their management contracts in May, 2016. This exit from the 88-key Jodhpur property and 91-key Ahmedabad property is preceded by earlier exits from the Taj Palace Marrakech in Morocco and Taj Dubai, as well as the sale of the boutique Blue Sydney hotel.

Six Chinese Hotel Groups Invest RMB18 million to Create Online Distribution Platform

Huatian Hotel Group announced that it has entered into an agreement with five other prominent Chinese hotel groups to build a new online distribution platform. The five hotel groups are: New Century Hotel Group, Celebrity City Hotels, Newbeacon Hotel Group (Wuhan), Shuguang Hotel Group and Guangdong (International) Hotel Management Holdings. Each of the six groups will invest RMB3 million for an equal share of 16.66% and Huatian Hotels is making a cash-based investment. The six alliance members are all well known domestic hotel groups that collectively have 75,000 hotel rooms and over five million loyalty members. Increasing pressure from OTA online booking platforms has hampered the hotel groups’ profit growth and pushed them to set up their own platform to reduce their reliance of OTAs and enable the free flow of customer resources and secure direct sales at relatively low costs.

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