OUTRIGGER Hotels and Resorts Asia-Pacific opened its first investment property in Asia last week in a strategic shift that will see the company focus on purchasing properties for regional expansion.
The company moved from negotiating management terms for the then-Laguna Beach Resort to purchasing the beachfront property outright last year. The rebranded 255-room Outrigger Laguna Phuket Beach Resort opened last Thursday.
David Carey, president and CEO, Outrigger Enterprises Group, said the Phuket investment signals a change in how the privately-owned company will do business across Asia-Pacific.
“What’s different in the strategy now is that we started out with a notion of managing with some partial investment, and what we found is that the opportunity and control (offered by purchasing properties outright) will really enable us to execute property repositioning the way it should be done,” he said.
“Sometimes it’s complicated if you have a variety of different owners and people with different goals. It’s often easier to do it yourselves first then discuss capital structure later.”
Originally based in Hawaii, Outrigger shifted its focus to Asia where it opened its regional office in Phuket in 2008.
Said Carey: “The reason we’re interested in (Asia-Pacific) is because the source markets for all these places are growing. You go down the list and there’s China, there’s huge potential in India, and right here in Thailand there’s a lot of Russian market growth. There is also a lot of inter-Asia travel growth from Hong Kong, Singapore and expats that want to travel.”
Outrigger currently operates three resorts in Thailand, one each in Bali, Fiji, Guam, five properties in Australia and more than 30 in Hawaii.
The company is looking to expand to other key destinations across the region, paying close attention to the Maldives, Mauritius, Bali, Okinawa and some Australian islands.
