SWISS-BELHOTEL International will establish a presence in the Philippines with a new deal to manage a 426-room hotel in the capital.

Slated for a 2016 opening, the country’s first Swiss-Belhotel property will be located in Quezon City’s mixed development in North Triangle, a prime area that will become the next central business district and hub of all commercial activities in Metro Manila.

Commercial establishments, government institutions, hospitals and medical facilities as well as universities can be found in the immediate vicinity, and the hotel will be accessible from the main thoroughfare of EDSA and at least three MRT stations.

Speaking to TTG Asia e-Daily, Gavin M Faull, chairman and president of Swiss-Belhotel International, said: “Swiss-Belhotel Quezon City will target business travellers, the government sector, and the meetings and incentives market as its location is well-suited to this business segment.”

Other hotel facilities will include eight multi-function rooms, a grand ballroom for up to 1,000 delegates, three executive club floors and a lounge as well as one floor dedicated to spa suites, a fitness centre and several restaurants.

The Hong Kong-based hotel operator relinquished management of The Linden Suites serviced residence in Ortigas to the property’s owners in 2011. Swiss-Belhotel is now “in the middle of negotiations with properties in Manila and Makati, which we hope to close as soon as possible”, revealed Faull.

Faull disclosed: “We are looking at growing our hospitality portfolio in the Philippines across all of our brands, which range from two-star to five-star, to complement the existing hotels we have in operation as well as those in the development pipeline that currently number 120 across Asia-Pacific and the Middle East.

“We have built a strong presence in Indonesia and will have 60 hotels operating in that market by the end of 2014, so we are certainly keen to bring our expertise and professionalism to the Philippines, which offers many opportunities, and build a presence of equal stature.”

SOFITEL Luxury Hotels will launch two new hotels in India by 2016 – Sofitel Mulund and Sofitel So Mumbai Mulund ­– after strong performance seen at Sofitel Mumbai BKC, the only Sofitel property in the country at the moment.

“Mulund is one of Mumbai’s first planned suburbs, and has become a testament today to India’s growing middle class and its aspirational style of living. We plan to cash in on this untouched location and make our mark as a unique luxury hotel,” said Markland Blaiklock, senior vice president, Sofitel Asia Pacific.”

The openings will also mark Sofitel So’s debut in India.

Speaking about India’s market potential, Blaiklock said: “There’s a good reason why foreign brands are tapping the Indian luxury market. Many Indians are now entering the ranks of the wealthy and developing a taste for luxury, in both the leisure and business segments. We are extremely positive about the growth of both segments in the Indian market.

Sofitel also hopes to be present in New Delhi, Bengaluru, Chennai and Goa.

Blaiklock said that Sofitel’s flagship property in Mumbai had seen “phenomenal” response and “robust occupancy” a year after it opened. The hotel mainly caters to the business travellers due to its location in the Bandra Kurla Complex.

“Our restaurants and bars have become city landmarks,” said Blaiklock.

During a regional event at Sofitel Mumbai KBC recently, he outlined two high-priority brand objectives moving towards 2015: to increase brand value by pursuing targeted developments in key capital cities and major tourist destinations in the region, and to expand the brand portfolio to 150 hotels globally.

TRAVEL companies are cancelling tours and scrambling to keep tourists comfortable in the wake of yesterday’s 7.2 magnitude earthquake.

The earthquake, which struck 2km south-east of Carmen town in Bohol at 08.12, temporarily disrupted operations at Mactan-Cebu International Airport and Tagbilaran Airport in Bohol as well as ferry services to Tagbilaran port. It also dealt heavy damage to Bohol’s road network, collapsing four bridges and leaving cracks in major roads.

Jun de los Reyers, marketing manager of Travel Village, said upcoming tours (inbound refers to only foreign incoming) for domestic, South Korean and Chinese clients were cancelled for the foreseeable future while the company assessed the situation. “We have to ask (our clients) to defer their programmes, probably to November.”

Guests housed at Bohol Tropics Resort in Tagbilaran, where Travel Village is based, are staying in tents and getting electricity through generators, while Travel Village consultants run makeshift operations nearby for safety reasons, he added.

Aileen Domingo, vice president of CCT.168 Travel & Tours, said the agency was discouraging tours within Bohol and telling travellers to remain within their resorts as heavy aftershocks continue today. “Some tourists were insisting on city tours (to Tagbilaran) and the countryside tour, which we couldn’t allow,” she said.

The majority of Panglao resorts sustained minor damage in the earthquake, according to the chairman of the provincial tourism council of Bohol, Lucas Nunag. Power in Tagbilaran has been restored, but not for all Panglao resorts, though most properties have their own generators, he said.

Over in Cebu, tours were cancelled yesterday but were resumed immediately afterward, according to Jun Barretto, president of Cebu Trip Tours. “Malls in Cebu were closed, as well as some shops and other establishments.”

Tourist attractions also took a beating, with Chocolate Hills, Baclayon Church, Loboc river and Loboc church – the last completely flattened by the quake – still off limits. At least 10 Spanish-era churches were damaged or destroyed in Bohol, while the belfry of Sto Nino Shrine in Cebu fell apart during the quake.

THE UK this week announced a number of measures to simplify visa application processes for China visitors, an increasingly lucrative source market that contributed 262 million pounds (US$418.4 million) in the London Luxury Quarter last year.

Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne arrived in Beijing on Sunday for a five-day trade mission, where he unveiled a new pilot scheme that will allow selected Chinese travel consultants to apply for UK visas by submitting the EU’s Schengen visa form.

Currently, Chinese travellers can apply for a single visa for passage to most of Europe, but travel to the UK requires a separate application. The new move will spare travel consultants taking tourists to the UK and other parts of Europe the hassle of submitting two forms.

The UK government will also introduce a new 24-hour “super priority” visa service next summer, and is mulling the expansion of its VIP mobile visa service that is available only in Shanghai and Beijing at the moment. As part of this service, visa teams go to applicants to collect completed forms and biometric data, with the whole process taking less than five minutes in total.

According to the British government, 210,000 visas were issued to visiting Chinese nationals last year.

Mark Henderson, vice-chairman, UK China Visa Alliance, commented: “Chinese tourism is vital to ‘Brand Britain’ across luxury, retail and hospitality sectors and if the visa process were streamlined, could boost the economy annually by 1.2 billion pounds per year. With these high-spending travellers keen to not only come to holiday but also forge long-term relationships through business investments and acquiring property, it is now more important than ever to help make it as easy as possible for Chinese tourists to visit the UK.”

Figures from London Luxury Quarter, which encompasses 42 luxury streets across Mayfair, Piccadilly and St James, show that Chinese travellers spend 1,656 pounds per transaction on average. This makes the Chinese traveller the second highest spending nationality after Qataris, who ring up 1,788 pounds per transaction.

INDIA’S Ministry of Finance now includes hotel projects under its harmonised master list of infrastructure sub sectors, allowing large capital-intensive hotel projects access to loans with longer repayment periods.

According to the October 7 notification from the ministry, the change is for hotel projects costing more than Rs2 billion (US$32.3 million) and convention centres of over Rs3 billion in any part of India.

Such projects will be entitled to long-term loans with repayment tenures of 15 years at lower rates of interest, higher debt-to-equity ratio, access to more funds through low-cost external commercial loans and financial assistance including takeout financing from specialised agencies such as IDFC, India Infrastructure Finance Company and the new Infrastructure Debt Funds.

The Reserve Bank of India last year also began including three-star or higher categories of hotels located outside cities with populations bigger than one million to its infrastructure lending list.

Applauding the move, Vivek Nair, honorary secretary of the Federation of Hotel and Restaurant Associations of India, said in an email to TTG Asia e-Daily: “In the present environment of high interest rates where the industry is also witnessing a temporary demand-supply mismatch on account of the economic slowdown, we have been persistently articulating that proactive policy action was imperative to insulate the requisite long-term investment in the sector from cyclical macroeconomic volatility.”

Indian hotels are expected to require investment of Rs1.3 trillion for the 180,000 classified guest rooms predicted to be built by 2017.

However, Crowne Plaza New Delhi Okhla’s general manager, Barun Jolly, commented: “It is a good move, but we really have to see how well it is implemented and how easy is the process of disbursement. If executed well, it will lead to growth of a lot of hotels in Tier Two and Tier Three cities. Development of hotels in these cities will greatly augment domestic travel too.”