INTERCONTINENTAL Hotels Group (IHG) has launched Jakarta’s first Holiday Inn Express hotel, the 101-room Holiday Inn Express Jakarta Thamrin.

The hotel is located in Jakarta’s central business district, a one-hour drive from Soekarno Hatta International Airport and minutes away from major MNC headquarters, banks, embassies and government offices. It is also within walking distance of famous shopping malls such as Plaza Indonesia and Grand Indonesia.

Clarence Tan, COO, South-east Asia and Resorts, IHG, said: “The New Year has kicked-off to a great start with the opening of Holiday Inn Express Jakarta, making it the second Holiday Inn Express to open in Indonesia in the last three months. With 12 more Holiday Inn Express hotels in the pipeline, Indonesia will continue to be an important growth market for us over the next few years.

“Jakarta sees more than two million visitors each year and is known as one of the region’s top shopping destinations. With the new hotel situated on the city’s busiest road, this makes it the smart choice for travellers wanting to stay close to major business hubs and tourist attractions.”

Guests can expect free Wi-Fi throughout the hotel, a free Express Start Breakfast or Grab & Go option, and a self-service business centre and laundry room.

Holiday Inn Express Jakarta Thamrin is the fifth Holiday Inn Express in the region after openings in Semarang (TTG Asia e-Daily, November 11, 2013), Bangkok (TTG Asia e-Daily, September 19, 2013), Phuket (TTG Asia e-Daily, February 19, 2013) and Singapore (TTG Asia e-Daily, July 17, 2013).

To mark the opening, Holiday Inn Express Jakarta Thamrin is dangling special rates from US$54++ per night for bookings between now and June 30, 2014. Visit www.holidayinnexpress.com.

ACCOR will ramp up its portfolio in Malaysia from eight properties to 25 hotels in 2017, making it the country’s leading international hotel operator.

By 2017, there will be a Pullman in Port Dickson and one Novotel each in Malacca, Taiping and Klang; one Ibis in Kuala Lumpur’s city centre and nine Ibis Styles across Malaysia; as well as Mercures in Kota Kinabalu, Kuala Lumpur and Selangor.

In this year alone, Accor expects to open at least four hotels in Peninsular and East Malaysia. These include Novotel Melaka, Mercure Kota Kinabalu Eton, Ibis Styles Sandakan Waterfront and Ibis Styles Ipoh. The last is the latest addition to the Accor family in Malaysia, soft opening this month with 113 rooms.

Gerard Guillouet, senior vice president for Accor Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore, toldTTG Asia e-Daily: “The mix of hotel segments in our pipeline indicates that we will continue to have a well-balanced network in 2015 with a total of 20 hotels, of which 15 per cent will be upscale, 40 per cent midscale and 45 per cent economy. The network will also be geographically balanced.”

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DESPITE a rocky start to 2014, several Thailand-based DMCs are reporting stable bookings for the longhaul leisure market.

Go Vacation Thailand’s director of business development, Tobias Fischer, said: “We’ve hardly seen any cancellations for Bangkok…The longhaul leisure markets usually book their trips long in advance. For them, Bangkok is just a stopover destination as part of an itinerary with beach extensions or round trips in the country, so the capital can be easily bypassed.”

“Phuket, Koh Samui and northern Thailand are still strong for the leisure market. Cancellations have been minimal this time (compared with past crises in Thailand in recent years), and our 1Q2014 bookings have been stronger than the first quarter last year,” commented James Ramage, group managing director, sales and marketing, Diethelm Travel Group.

Likewise, bookings are holding up quite well for Exotissimo Travel Group. Hamish Keith, COO and co-owner, said: “Although we have received cancellations for leisure travellers to Thailand, we are not really seeing a slowdown in new enquiries, and February and March bookings are still looking positive.”

However, some inbound players expressed concerns about the lingering effects of a prolonged political crisis.

Go Vacation Thailand’s Fischer said forward bookings are fewer compared with the same period last year although he pointed out that the reasons are hard to tell.

Claudio Kellenberger, deputy managing director, Asian Trails, also revealed that while there has been very few cancellations from Europe and business is rather stable, bookings for February and March are fewer than usual. “Overall, despite the current situation, we’re still expecting growth for 2014,” he said

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PATA has announced a new TV campaign entitled PATA Loves ASEAN which will be aired in June across Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

The US$300,000 advertising campaign on the Travel Channel will promote responsible tourism experiences under the following categories: nature tourism, culture and heritage tourism, community-based tourism, cruise and river tourism, and health and wellness tourism.

Some 210 60-second clips featuring all 10 ASEAN member states will be facilitated by PATA. PATA’s Love logo and ASEAN’s consumer tourism slogan Southeast Asia: Feel the Warmth will also be highlighted.

Owned by Scripps Networks Interactive, London-based Travel Channel is a leading international travel broadcaster, transmitting 24 hours a day in 21 languages to 130 countries.

PATA CEO, Martin Craigs, said: “ASEAN has emerged as a global leader of sophisticated niche tourism products that have a caring and community touch. The PATA Loves ASEAN campaign will promote those products, which are also part of ASEAN’s strategic tourism plan for 2012-2015.”

“The PATA Loves ASEAN campaign will illustrate the benefits to host and guest by embracing responsible tourism as part of South-east Asia’s connected visitor economy,” added Ivy Chee, regional director – East Asia, who initiated the campaign.

In the presentation sessions to ministers and NTOs at the ASEAN Tourism Forum, PATA also previewed its new five-year tourism arrivals forecasts. The predictions are based on an econometric model known as auto-regressive distributed lag and error correction model, said to be a new cutting-edge tool developed by PATA with the Hong Kong Polytechnic University School of Hotel and Tourism Management.

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SPICEJET has announced the latest adjustments to its international flight routes and introduced a slew of passenger benefits in order to remain competitive.

According to the airline’s news release last week, SpiceJet is set to launch new routes out of Kolkata to Guangzhou and Hong Kong by end-February, while a new Dhaka service is expected to be introduced in the near future.

SpiceJet will also axe flights on a number of routes to optimise resource allocation: Pune-Bangkok, Varanasi-Sharjah and New Delhi-Guangzhou.

In January, the carrier rolled out SpiceMAX for passengers who purchase premium seats, giving them priority handling, check-in and 10kg extra in baggage allowance. A frequent flier programme was also launched at the same time, offering one free ticket for every six flights and two tickets for every 10 flights rather than mileage.

SpiceJet is further targeting business-class travellers by reconfiguring its Boeing 737 aircraft for more legroom and offering more value-added services. It will also consolidate and expand the existing alliance with Tigerair.

Rajendra Chruiwala, director-eastern region, IATA Agents Association of India, said high fuel costs and airport charges were forcing airlines to optimise aircraft deployment and route operations.

“(Indian carriers) have to strike a balance and constantly rejig their routes in a market that will see increased competition from AirAsia India and Tata-SIA Airlines in the near future,” he commented.

FAR East Hospitality (FEH) has relaunched the Rendezvous Hotel Singapore, removing the ‘Grand’ from its name pre-acquisition and injecting a new art-inspired concept to differentiate the brand from others in its portfolio.

FEH now counts nine brands following its joint venture with Australia’s Toga Group which operates Adina Apartment Hotels, Medina Service Apartments, Rendezvous Hotels, Vibe Hotels and Travelodge Hotels (TTG Asia e-Daily, July 3, 2013).

Far East Hospitality Management CEO, Arthur Kiong, interviewed by TTG Asia e-Daily on the sideline of the relaunch last Friday, described the repositioning as “an experiment” to see if the brand could appeal to the cultured cosmopolitan market.

Being art-inspired, the hotel will offer dedicated spaces to showcase local art, technology to facilitate art and design-related exhibitions and special entry rates to museums in its vicinity, among others.

“We bought a hotel with an existing product, so we needed to rationalise how it’s going to compete with other brands, but also how it would sit within our brand. This (relaunch) is an experiment; we spent a modest amount in renovating the lobby, function rooms, club and club lounge and (in the repositioning) to see if it could appeal to the cultured cosmopolitan market,” said Kiong.

He said FEH’s brands are all geared for mid/upscale market, however, as this market is huge, there has to be different products to suit its different psychographics, not demographics.

“Rendezvous is located in areas that have museums, art, where the local community could display its art and vibrancy, while Oasia is for the road warriors, who are here to work but want serenity and functionality at the same time. Quincy is for the jet-set crowd who wants glamour while Village is more in the bohemian, fringe neighbourhoods.

“You can’t divide people by their demographics – i.e., females or males, Malays or Indians, young or old – rather, by their psychographics.”

Kiong said with a string of brands, the group would look into expanding into gateway cities which are directly connected to Singapore. “Our strategy is to have many brands so when we go into these gateway cities, we could have a Quincy, a Rendezvous, an Oasia, etc, which does not compete with each other, unlike having six brand X hotels in one city.”

These gateway cities are also already a huge source market for FEH, for example Australia or Europe. “Australia contributes about nine per cent to our business. Europe is significant too. So I could see a Rendezvous in, say, Berlin, if there’s an opportunity, as we already have Adina there,” said Kiong.

INDONESIAN boutique hospitality firm Plataran Hotels & Resorts is expanding eastwards, having already secured a presence in Bali.

Established in 2008, the company had only recently forayed into hotel management in 2012 when it took over Plataran Canggu Bali, which it owned since 2010, according to Iwan Sitompul, corporate director of sales and marketing.

This property is currently undergoing refurbishment, which will be completed next month.

“Our development strategy is to open new properties in exotic destinations in Indonesia,” said Iwan. “We are not building city hotels, but focusing on developing low-rise, boutique properties in traditional Javanese houses.”

Following the recent openings of the nine-villa Plataran Komodo and the 51-room Plataran Ubud in December 2013, several new properties will be rolled out in the next two years, according to Iwan. The 30-room Plataran Bromo will launch in 3Q2015 while the 20-room Plataran Sumba will debut in 1Q2016.

In Borobudur, Plataran is building a 61-room hotel whose meeting and wedding facilities will augment its existing all-villa property nearby. This is slated for 1Q2016.

The company is also adding a six-pax yacht in February to its existing four phinisi boats to “offer an even more upmarket experience for guests”, Iwan shared. All five vessels will be based in Labuan Bajo, located in west Flores in Nusa Tenggara, an hour’s flight from Bali.

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THE ASEAN-Japan Centre (AJC), in collaboration with the United Nations World Tourism Organisation, has set in motion an exchange programme to help Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos sharpen their cultural and heritage appeal in a bid to encourage greater Japanese traveller interest in these ASEAN destinations.

The programme is the first of many aimed at developing products these destinations are rich in, noted AJC’s director of Tourism & Exchange Division, Dananjaya Axioma.

“We have taken a group consisting of tourism academicians and heritage management (personnel) from the three countries on a fam trip to Japan in November last year,” Axioma said, adding that participants attended a workshop and training seminar in Tokyo and site inspections of cultural and heritage attractions in Nara.

The activities are also expected to guide Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos in managing attractions with cultural and historical value.

“Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia are already major destinations for Japanese outbound to ASEAN (so) we have to work with stakeholders of these three countries to find ways to increase Japanese arrivals,” said Axioma.

Following these activities, participants are expected to develop and implement relevant programmes for selected cultural and heritage sites.

However, AJC has yet to meet with the working groups of Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos to obtain updates and discuss the next step forward.

Expressing support for the initiative, Union of Myanmar Travel Association chairman, Aung Myat Kyaw, told the TTG Asia e-Daily: “Japan is one of the main markets Myanmar is keen to develop.”

Although Japanese arrivals to Myanmar is still a minute figure, it grew 123 per cent between 2011 and 2012. Aung believes that product improvements will raise traveller interest.

In 2012, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar welcomed 179,000, 42,000 and 47,600 Japanese respectively.

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