LAO Airlines is resurrecting flights to Myanmar in October, 33 years after axing the once unprofitable route.

The national carrier will offer flights out of Vientiane and Luang Prabang to Yangon, and is due to sign a codesharing agreement with Myanmar Airways International on the route, said Saleum Tayarath, commercial department director, Lao Airlines.

“We want to tap tourism demand from countries like China, South Korea and Japan, (catering to) groups to both countries (Laos and Myanmar),” he said.

The new services are also part of a strategy by Thailand, Laos, Myanmar, Cambodia and Vietnam to build better connections within the Mekong region, said the press release.

HILTON Worldwide has opened South-east Asia’s first Hilton Garden Inn branded hotel in Hanoi, which also marks its second Hilton property in Vietnam.

The 86-room Hilton Garden Inn Hanoi is situated near the intersection of Phan Chu Trinh and Tran Hung Dao streets, within the city’s business, cultural and leisure centre, or 40km from the Noi Bai International Airport.

“Our focused service brand is tailored towards providing the signature features and services that meet the demands of value-conscious travellers who are always on the move,” said Adrian Kurre, global head, Hilton Garden Inn.

Each room comes with Hilton’s signature Garden Sleep System bed (Serta bed) and an ergonomic Mirra desk chair by Herman Miller.

Other facilities and services within the hotel include a 24-hour business centre, free Wi-Fi Internet in guestrooms and public spaces, a lounge, a fitness centre, the all-day Garden Grill restaurant and a 24-hour retail store called the Pavilion Pantry.

ASCOTT will make inroads into Nanjing in the second half of 2014 with the opening of its first serviced residence in the city, having recently signed a contract with Nanjing Lek Yuen Property Development to manage the property.

The 290-unit Citadines Baijia Lake Nanjing will be located a 15-minute and 25-minute drive from the Nanjing high-speed railway station and airport respectively.

Citadines Baijia Lake Nanjing will offer apartments in studio to three-bedroom configurations, with fully-equipped kitchens and separate work and sleeping areas.

Facilities at the serviced apartment include a gym, children’s play area, residence lounge, breakfast lounge, meeting room and business centre.

Chong Kee Hiong, Ascott CEO, said: “China is Ascott’s fastest-growing market. It is also our strongest market where our revenue per available unit in 2012 increased by 15 per cent over 2011. Besides building on our presence in tier-one cities in China, we have been expanding into high-growth cities where strong foreign investment has generated a large demand for serviced residences.”

Lee Chee Koon, deputy CEO and managing director for North Asia, Ascott, added: “Our first property in Nanjing is well-positioned to tap the growing number of expatriates, business travellers and tourists in Nanjing. Citadines Baijia Lake Nanjing is near the city centre and strategically located in Jiangning District, which is home to Nanjing’s largest economic and high-tech zone.”

PRINCESS Cruises will debut a free online training programme in Singapore next month ahead of the company’s first homeport season in the city-state in 2014.

At a media conference today, Alan Buckelew, Princess Cruises president and CEO said the cruise operator wants to tap the growing regional cruise market and is targeting 40,000 passengers roundtrip from Singapore on the Sapphire Princess.

Sapphire Princess will homeport in Singapore for a four-month season between November 2014 and February 2015. Sales begins tomorrow, with the ship offering trips to seven countries (including Malaysia, Vietnam and Thailand) on sailings between three and 11 days long.

The 2,670-pax Sapphire Princess features staterooms with private balconies, a spa, steakhouse, wine bar, boutiques and pizzeria, among other amenities.

Explaining why Singapore was chosen, Jan Swartz, executive vice president for sales, marketing & customer service, Princess Cruises, said: “We see the growing awareness of cruise tourism in Singapore, which gives us an opportunity to grow.” She added that the cruises from Singapore were also expected to draw strong interest from neighbouring countries like Malaysia, India and Indonesia.

Princess Cruises also announced today that it would bring its Princess Academy to Singapore. Currently available in several countries, the programme comprises 20 courses and awards travel experts with a “diploma” upon their completion.

Swartz said the cruise operator is aiming to have at least 90 per cent of all Singapore-based cruise travel consultants certified over the next two to three years.

World Express managing director, Darren Tan, applauded the move. He said: “Although cruising is becoming popular, it still forms a small proportion in the travel market and more can be done to educate the industry. It is important especially for travel consultants to have good knowledge because they are the ones that are selling and promoting the products.”

Although renowned for longhaul cruises, Princess is introducing short roundtrip cruises in Asia, with the first to debut in Japan later this month on the 2,022-pax Sun Princess.

Said Swartz: “We want to bring in new customers by introducing shorthaul, and letting them have a taste to see what we can offer, so they may choose to take even longer trips with us in future.”

CHINESE expenditure on travel abroad reached US$102 billion in 2012, recording a 40 per cent jump from 2011’s US$73 billion and clinching top spot as the world’s largest tourism source market in terms of spending.

This data by UNWTO puts China ahead of former top spender Germany and second-largest spender the US, as well as other countries such as Italy, Japan, France and the UK.

The sharp rise in expenditure is due to the increased volume of international trips by Chinese travellers (10 million in 2000 to 83 million in 2012), rapid urbanisation, rising disposable incomes, relaxation of restrictions on foreign travel and the appreciating Chinese currency, said the release.

Some of the other emerging markets that have increased their share of world tourism spend over the past decade include Russia, which saw an increase of 32 per cent in 2012 to US$43 billion, bringing it from seventh to fifth place in international tourism spending. Brazil shot up from 29^th place in 2005 to 12^th place last year with expenditure of US$22 billion.

“Emerging economies continue to lead growth in tourism demand,” said UNWTO secretary-general, Taleb Rifai. “The impressive growth of tourism expenditure from China and Russia reflects the entry into the tourism market of a growing middle class from these countries, which will surely continue to change the map of world tourism.”

Meanwhile, key traditional source markets also posted positive results – expenditure by Germany and the US grew six per cent, the UK posted four per cent, Canada crept up seven per cent, and both Australia and Japan inched up three per cent. France and Italy were the only markets in the top 10 to record a decline in spending, by six per cent and one per cent respectively.

Full data on international tourism expenditure will be published in the UNWTO World Tourism Barometer, to be released end April.

COMPETITION is heating up between legacy carrier Philippine Airlines (PAL) and budget airline Cebu Pacific (CEB), as the latter has filed applications to fly international routes that PAL is already serving or intends to serve.

Records from the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) show that CEB wants to fly to India, which PAL already operates with the weekly Manila-New Delhi flight via Bangkok. CEB also plans to mount a four-times-weekly direct Manila-Moscow service, similar to the service PAL intends to start in September.

CEB also has its eye on the 300-seat entitlement to Papua New Guinea previously allocated but left unused by PAL, as well as the reallocation of 1,260 weekly seats to Taiwan PAL has left fallow.

Data from CAB also shows that CEB, PAL, Zest Air and PAL Express have all applied to fly daily to Riyadh, Jeddah and Dammam in Saudi Arabia within the year. Both CEB and PAL also plan to serve Qatar and Kuwait.

As a result of CEB’s aggressive expansion, the carrier has grabbed a 16 per cent share of the Philippine’s international aviation market, compared to PAL (24 per cent) and foreign carriers (55 per cent), according to January-September 2012 statistics from business consultancy firm Innodata.

Domestically, CEB has secured a 45 per cent share versus PAL’s 21 per cent, and PAL Express’ 22 per cent.

Travel consultants agree that the traditional rivalry would likely benefit the travel industry, lowering prices and increasing accessibility to the Philippines.

Francisco Lim, general manager of Adkins Travel Agency, said: “The competition would lead to reduced airfares, which is already taking place. But travellers also go for airlines’ reliability in terms of service quality and punctuality in departure and arrival, something that budget carriers can improve on.”

Allan Sapad, senior travel consultant at Griffin Sierra Travel, added: “More choice in airlines is good for passengers. This can lead to price war not just for PAL and CEB but also for their other competitors.”

OUTRIGGER Hotels and Resorts Asia-Pacific opened its first investment property in Asia last week in a strategic shift that will see the company focus on purchasing properties for regional expansion.

The company moved from negotiating management terms for the then-Laguna Beach Resort to purchasing the beachfront property outright last year. The rebranded 255-room Outrigger Laguna Phuket Beach Resort opened last Thursday.

David Carey, president and CEO, Outrigger Enterprises Group, said the Phuket investment signals a change in how the privately-owned company will do business across Asia-Pacific.

“What’s different in the strategy now is that we started out with a notion of managing with some partial investment, and what we found is that the opportunity and control (offered by purchasing properties outright) will really enable us to execute property repositioning the way it should be done,” he said.

“Sometimes it’s complicated if you have a variety of different owners and people with different goals. It’s often easier to do it yourselves first then discuss capital structure later.”

Originally based in Hawaii, Outrigger shifted its focus to Asia where it opened its regional office in Phuket in 2008.

Said Carey: “The reason we’re interested in (Asia-Pacific) is because the source markets for all these places are growing. You go down the list and there’s China, there’s huge potential in India, and right here in Thailand there’s a lot of Russian market growth. There is also a lot of inter-Asia travel growth from Hong Kong, Singapore and expats that want to travel.”

Outrigger currently operates three resorts in Thailand, one each in Bali, Fiji, Guam, five properties in Australia and more than 30 in Hawaii.

The company is looking to expand to other key destinations across the region, paying close attention to the Maldives, Mauritius, Bali, Okinawa and some Australian islands.

MALAYSIAN hotel management company, Ri-Yaz Hotels & Resorts, is looking at expanding westwards into the Middle East, with three hotel management contracts currently under negotiation.

Ri-Yaz group CEO, Shaheen Shah, said: “The Middle East looks like a promising market as they like (friendly) Malaysian hospitality.

“The first step is to set up an office with a local partner in Dubai by June. After that, we can then source for more hotel management contracts.”

Ri-Yaz has also recently signed three management contracts for hotels in India. Currently under construction in Tirupati, Agra and Visakhapatnam, the hotels are scheduled to begin operations in 2016, said Shaheen.

In the pipeline are plans to manage another three hotels in Indonesia, one in the Maldives and five in Malaysia by 2015, all of which are currently under construction.

Ri-Yaz is projected to manage a room inventory of just over 3,000 by 2015.

TOURIST arrivals to Indonesia jumped 14.5 per cent year-on-year to 678,415 in February on the back of the Lunar New Year holidays. However, this works out to be a less-than-desirable 3.8 per cent growth in year-to-date arrivals.

“The significant growth in arrivals from Singapore (25.5 per cent), Malaysia (15.6 per cent), Taiwan (32.8 per cent), China (73.1 per cent) and Hong Kong (84.3 per cent) in February has shown this,” said Indonesia’s minister of tourism and creative economy, Mari Elka Pangestu.

She noted that a number of airlines, such as Garuda Indonesia, Lion Air and Sriwijaya Air, had created special promotions to boost arrivals over the festive period.

“The West Kalimantan tourist office and local tour operators also organised the Chap Go Meh (the 15^th day of the Lunar New Year) Festival in Pontianak last February,” Pangestu added.

In comparison, arrivals for January 2013 – the Lunar New Year fell in January in 2012 – were down by 5.8 per cent. Total arrivals to Indonesia for January-February were 1.3 million, a 3.8 per cent increase over last year’s 1.2 million.

Nevertheless, Mari said: “This is below the average growth rate we are expecting, which is five to six per cent, if we are to achieve the moderate target of 8.6 million arrivals or 10 per cent to reach nine million arrivals.

“However, it is still early in the year and we need to look at the growth of traffic in February as momentum to continue growing arrival numbers and quality to hit the nine million arrivals mark this year.

“We will continue to make various promotional efforts, organise events and foster the creative industries in tourist destinations to boost arrivals. ”

Indonesia Hotel and Restaurant Association chairman Yanti Sukamdani said Indonesia’s hotel industry was experiencing a slow start to the year with occupancy in the low 40s, but March occupancy was growing to between 45 per cent and 50 per cent, depending on the destination.

“January and February fall in the low season and the extreme weather (in Indonesia in mid-January and February) had affected travel, which in turn lowered hotel occupancies,” she said.

JAKARTA’S hotel scene is getting a new competitor with the soft opening of the 245-room JS Luwansa Hotel and Convention Center on April 1.

Located along Jalan Rasuna Said, more commonly known as the Kuningan area, the four-star hotel’s main target market is corporate and MICE travellers.

Facilities include a ballroom with capacity for up to 1,500 pax standing and 700 pax theatre-style, and 14 breakout rooms for between 20 and 50 people each.

JS Luwansa Hotel and Convention Center’s director of sales & marketing, Agus Sofyan, said: “The surrounding government offices and embassies are our main target market as we hope to achieve 35 per cent MICE and 40 per cent corporate business.”

Agus is targeting 65 per cent occupancy in the hotel’s first year of operations.

JS Luwansa is the fourth property in the group belonging to Indonesia’s well-known businessman Sofjan Wanandi’s family.

The others – Luwansa Palangkaraya, Luwansa Labuan Bajo and Luwansa Tabanan, Bali – all fall in the three-star category.

To mark the opening of JS Luwansa, the hotel has rolled out special introductory rates starting from Rp750,000 (US$79).