GHM is embracing the return of André Kretschmann, who opened the Chedi Muscat in 2003 and returns now to helm The Legian Bali.
In between, Kretschmann worked as area general manager for the Cheval Blanc Group across South-east Asia, the Middle East and the Indian Ocean.
The German national brings over 20 years of hospitality in Asia to his new role, including his experience managing GHM properties in Jakarta, Phuket, Oman and Sri Lanka for GHM.
Wilpena Pound Resort. Credit: Accor
ACCOR is adding two new hotels to its network: Wilpena Pound Resort in South Australia and Mercure Warragul in Victoria.
An existing property, Wilpena Pound Resort has joined Accor’s distribution network and is now operating under a management agreement with Accor.
The 60-room hotel and the Ikara Safari Camp are situated within the Flinders Ranges National Park in South Australia, featuring an on-site restaurant, bar and a solar-heated swimming pool.
All guestrooms and the 15 safari tents are air-conditioned and come with their own ensuite bathrooms.
Meanwhile, Mercure Warragul will join the network this July under a franchise agreement.
The new build, 50-key hotel is located in the centre of Warragul, which is approximately 100km south-east of Melbourne and south of the Great Dividing Range region.
The hotel will have one meeting room and chargeback facilities to a restaurant and bar, which will be leased to an independent operator.
SHERATON Langkawi Beach Resort will discontinue its affiliation with Starwood Hotels & Resorts when its management agreement ends on June 1.
The property will be renamed Century Four Points Resort, and be managed and operated by Century Four Points Resort, said its acting general manager – group of hotels, Peter Athan.
Owned by Mashyur Mutiara, the resort has been linked to Starwood Hotels & Resorts since it took on the Sheraton name in 1991.
Athan said that he would stay on with the property and there would be no changes to top and middle management staff going forward, while all confirmed bookings will be honoured.
TTG Asia e-Daily understands that the property will contact the trade soon to advise on new contract rates.
Describing the property, Yap Sook Ling, managing director of Asian Overland Services Tours & Travel, said: “It is a lovely property. The set-up and layout is very nice and we don’t have issues with the service. However, the rooms need to be renovated.”
Another inbound travel consultant, Ally Bhoonee, executive director of World Avenues, agreed that the hotel needs a facelift if it were to maintain its five-star rank and compete in the international marketplace.
He said: “It will also make it easier for travel consultants to market the hotel if it is up to the standard of a five-star hotel.”
But asked if there were any plans to renovate the hotel, Athan replied: “Not at the moment.”
SOUTH-EAST Asia’s only indoor skydiving wind tunnel attraction, iFly Singapore, has launched a new event space, the Sky Garden.
Occupying over 558m2 on the top of iFly Singapore at Sentosa, the Sky Garden comprises of both an indoor and outdoor space catering to wedding and corporate events.
The outdoor terrace offers an open-air rooftop lawn against a picturesque beachfront view, with twice-nightly fireworks and sunsets as backdrop. The venue also features a stage, bar and private area.
Over S$800,000 (US$598,000) was spent on the expansion project, including landscaping of the rooftop, Canon imaging systems, LED lighting for events and a state-of-the-art sound system by K-array and Bose.
The company’s catering partners are Orange Clove Catering, Purple Sage Group and Rasel Catering Singapore, which is halal-certified.
A range of wedding and corporate packages are available for a minimum of 100 pax, starting from S$120++ per pax for a wedding buffet lunch and S$90++ per pax for a corporate dinner-and-dance buffet.
Meanwhile, iFly Singapore’s indoor skydiving remains a popular teambuilding activity for corporate and incentive groups because of its thrilling nature, said Lawrence Koh, founder and managing director of iFly Singapore.
“The thing about iFly is that it is something that (many) have never tried before…This makes the corporate event memorable,” he added.
By Jerlene Ng
ANOTHER travel agency in Singapore has surprised trade and consumers alike with the sudden announcement of its closure just ahead of the peak holiday season in June.
Local weekly The Sunday Times reported yesterday that staff at Asia-Euro Holidays were told to work earlier than usual, after which the agency posted a notice on its front door and on its Facebook account to say that it had closed and will stop providing services immediately.
It also told customers whose passports it was holding on to, to contact an agent in charge of visa applications.
An Asia-Euro Holidays spokesperson was quoted as saying that the company had bought 14 properties in Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand in 2010, and accumulated losses of S$2 million from this.
According to the visa agent, many employees have also not been paid, said The Sunday Times report.
Meanwhile, Mandarin-language daily Lianhe Wanbao said approximately 500 customers have been left stranded by the closure.
Asia-Euro Holidays is not the first Singapore-based travel agency to close abruptly. Five Star Tours’ sudden shutdown last year ahead of the Lunar New Year period left thousands of travellers in the lurch.
In response, Singapore’s Consumers Association of Singapore’s launched a pilot programme last February requiring travel agencies to take out insurance against sudden closures in order to protect customers.
How to Train Your Dragon concept art by Nico Marlet. Credit: Marina Bay Sands
DREAMWORKS Animation will, for the first time in Asia, give the public a peek into what goes on behind the scenes in making some of its biggest blockbusters, includingMadagascar and Kung Fu Panda.
From June 13, DreamWorks Animation: The Exhibition will feature 31 films and more than 400 displays, allowing visitors to experience how these animation works make the leap from initial sketches to the big screen.
Curated by the Australian Centre for the Moving Image in collaboration with DreamWorks Animation, the exhibition will be held at Singapore’s ArtScience Museum and feature concept drawings, storyboards, reconstructions of DreamWorks’ real-life workspaces and behind-the-scenes footage of the creative process.
The exhibition takes a complete look at two decades of the studio’s feature films, from its first film, Antz (1998), to recent releases, How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014) and Home (2015).
Visitors can step into three main galleries: Character, Story and World, to witness what it takes to create and bring the films to life.
In the Character section, 47 preliminary character sketches and video interviews with the production teams illustrate the thought and detail poured into each character during the development process.
Meanwhile, in the Story gallery, visitors can watch filmmaker Conrad Vernon perform his pitch for the infamous ‘Interrogating Gingy’ scene in Shrek.
The world of Kung Fu Panda as drawn by Ritchie Sacilioc. Credit: Marina Bay Sands
The World section focuses on the creation of the vivid worlds in the films, where fans will see the work of directors, production designers and concept artists.
The gallery also offers a 180° projection of a never-before-seen vision of Berk, the Viking township from How to Train Your Dragon.
Visitors of all ages can learn the basic principles of animation while creating their own short movie at The Animation Desk, using a simplified version of DreamWorks’ software.
Tickets to the exhibition are now on sale.
ALILA Hotels & Resorts will be launching three new properties in the second half of the year, including its first hotel in China.
Opening in September is the Alila Seminyak, located on Bali’s south-west coast and decorated with pools and vertical gardens. The fifth Alila property on the Indonesian hotspot will offer 240 rooms, a Spa Alila, gym and wellness centre, leisure concierge and an open-kitchen restaurant.
In a different part of Indonesia, Alila Solo will begin welcoming guests in October. Close to the artistic hub of Java, the hotel features four Alila suites with their own terraces and swimming pools.
A restaurant serving Indonesian-European food, a spa, gym, MICE facilities and a kids’ club can also be found within hotel premises.
Alila Anji breaks new ground for Alila Hotels & Resorts as the group’s pioneering property in China. Situated on a hillside overlooking a lake in the heart of Zhejiang province, Alila Anji bears resemblance to a traditional Chinese village.
The resort is made up of 74 villas with lake views and will also come with the Spa Alila.
Alila currently has 19 more new projects in development that will debut by 2018, including nine more properties in China.
TRAVEL and tourism players in New Zealand have expressed surprise and unhappiness over a new border levy announced yesterday as part of the government’s new budget.
When implemented next January, tourists to New Zealand can expect to pay an extra NZ$16 (US$11.80) when arriving and another NZ$6 on departure.
The New Zealand Herald quoted primary industries minister Nathan Guy as saying that the government spends NZ$100 million a year on border clearance for passengers and crew, a sum it wants footed by travellers rather than taxpayers.
Combined with existing charges, travellers to New Zealand should expect to pay NZ$36 in charges. This is still lower than Australia’s A$55 (US$43.50) passenger fees and the UK’s 71 pounds (US$111.30).
The industry and members of public can start offering feedback on the levy starting in June, said the same New Zealand Herald report.
A NEW wing is in store for Summit Parkview Hotel in Yangon as it celebrates its 20thanniversary this year.
To be built in an L-shape close to the existing hotel building, the extension will feature 195 rooms, a ballroom to accommodate 600 pax, bar, restaurant, pool, gym, spa and an executive floor.
Construction will begin in the coming months, with the project scheduled to complete in mid-2017.
Opened in 1995, the four-star hotel is wholly owned by Singapore investors and consists of a six-storey, single basement building with 251 rooms, coffeehouse-cum-restaurant and a bar lounge.
General manager of Summit Parkview Hotel, Vivian Chan, remarked that the hotel will be celebrating its 20th anniversary next month.
LONDON is losing lustre among Europe’s swelling ranks of longhaul tourists, but is still holding pole position in terms of absolute volume.
Research by ForwardKeys showed overall growth in longhaul travel to Europe jumped 3.9 per cent this year, boosted by the cheaper euro, while forward bookings for the May to August period are 3.7 per cent higher over the same time last year.
On the other hand, longhaul travel to London has slipped by 3.7 per cent and on-the-book travel for May to August is 1.8 per cent less year-on-year.
Driving this is a drop in interest from three of London’s major source markets namely, the US, China and Australia, each of which fell by four per cent.
Oliver Jager, co founder and CEO, of ForwardKeys, said: “These numbers must be a worry for London as it would expect to be the highlight of a longhaul trip to Europe and when Europe grows London should grow with it, not fall behind.”
However, London still receives the largest number of visitors with a 14 per cent market share of longhaul tourists.
Meanwhile, other European cities are basking in their present popularity. Amsterdam and Milan in particular have notched double-digit growth in year-to-date arrivals and forward bookings, while Munich is enjoying a 15.3 per cent rise in arrivals for 1Q and the attentions of Asian visitors from China, India, Japan and Taiwan.
Jager noted that Amsterdam is seeing “disproportionately good performance” in leisure categories including group bookings. Meanwhile, Milan is benefiting from improved air access and “the upcoming World Expo, which is drawing particularly strong interest from China, with bookings 50 per cent up on last year”.
Barcelona has also posted 12 per cent growth for 1Q, while Istanbul is up 10.1 per cent in forward bookings, in part due to easier visa procedures for Chinese and Taiwanese tourists.
Said Jager: “While international tourists are getting better value for their money in Europe this summer thanks to the decline of the euro, the strong demand from the Middle East (6.2 per cent market share; eight per cent growth) and Asian regions (20.8 per cent market share; 20.2 per cent growth) also reflects the growing affluence of those origin markets and an increasing thirst for travel.”
