Paul James, senior vice president, global marketing and branding, Millennium Hotels & Resorts
MILLENNIUM Hotels & Resorts (MHR), which will be unveiling its first M Social hotel in Singapore end April or early May, said there won’t be any confusion between the brand and its Studio M Singapore hotel.
Taxi drivers may disagree.
Both are located in the Robertson Quay area, are designer hotels – M Social is by Philippe Starck, while Studio M is by Pierro Lissoni – and both seek to cater to the contemporary traveller.
But MHR senior vice president global marketing and branding, Paul James, said it’s “an evolution of communication”. Said James: “M Social is not ‘studio’, which is much more in the select service market.”
Opened in 2010, Studio M is Singapore’s first all-lofts hotel with 360 rooms of around 22m2 in size. It describes itself in its website as a “distinctive four-star hotel” where “style and functionality are key”. Its ARR is reportedly around S$160 (US$114).
Six years and one Studio M later, the company’s chairman, Kwek Leng Beng, is now attempting to reinvent the four-star space again with M Social, a development with 100 loft-style rooms and 200 standard rooms, average room size of 20m2, 90 of them residences.
Although there isn’t a shortage of players now in Asia jostling for this space – CitizenM, Radisson Red, Canopy by Hilton, etc – James believes who’ll win in the end is who is most able to fuse the right blend of technology with service, design with comfort and convenience, and who is most able to provide genuine social spaces that enable a generation that likes to be alone together feel truly belonged.
“There are already brands like that but we are doing it from the perspective of being 30 years in the business, and the one thing we do well is blend technology and soft-touch,” he said.
James added that a “hero designer” like Philippe Starck would help with his insights to regenerate the space and the first M Social in Singapore was a testbed to expand the brand elsewhere and in Singapore either through new-builds or conversions.
Rates at M Social are expected to be well above S$200 for a start, said James. His base market, one-fifth, would be staycations due to its riverfront location. The rest would comprise a high percentage of leisure business and some corporate travel.
The closeness of the names may accelerate the company’s move to rebrand Studio M. JLL Hotels has reportedly been engaged to review international hotel chains to manage Studio M as well as the group’s luxury property which opened last year, South Beach. This also comes as Singapore’s hotel market braces for a tougher year, with arrivals softening and room stock growing by 6.4 per cent this year on top of last year’s 7.2 per cent.
