Longstanding members of Global Hotel Alliance (GHA), Bangkok-based Minor Hotels and Singapore-based Pan Pacific Hotels Group have made strategic investments to become the alliance’s shareholders, joining founding joint venture partners Omni Hotels and Resorts, Kempinski Hotels and Oracle Corporation.
The “substantial investments” the two new shareholders made will enable the alliance to accelerate its strategic growth plans, according to GHA. Minor’s investment is worth a total of US$3.2 million, representing a 10 per cent share of GHA, the same shareholding secured by Pan Pacific.
As shareholders, both Minor CEO Dillip Rajakarier and Pan Pacific CEO Lothar Nessmann will now sit on the GHA board.
Rajakarier commented: “Minor has been involved with GHA since 2007 with our Anantara brand. Since then we have grown and developed our own brands and continue to acquire new ones, and membership of GHA fits well with our multi-brand strategy… We are delighted to be able to take our place as a shareholder in the business, with the opportunity to help guide its growth over the coming years.”
Pan Pacific, which joined GHA as a founder member in 2004, has “seen first-hand how the alliance can drive large volumes of corporate and leisure business into hotels across our Pan Pacific and Parkroyal brands”, said Nessmann.
He added: “With the Discovery programme delivering several points in incremental occupancy into our hotels each year from around the alliance network, it is easy to be a supporter of the platform, and we’re looking forward to contributing to its future success as shareholders.”
GHA’s CEO Chris Hartley also revealed that the alliance, which is marking its 15th anniversary in 2019, is “making substantial investments in CRM and shared technology” to enhance the Discovery loyalty programme.
“The 13 million Discovery members will produce US$1.7 billion in room revenues in 2018, of which around US$125 million is from customers moving between our member brands,” said Hartley.
“We plan to double those numbers in the next few years, as independent brands look to collaborate with each other to share the common challenge of competing with the ever-consolidating major brands and third-party distribution providers.”
