THE WESTIN Singapore Marina Bay is banking on its location and the brand’s lifestyle proposition to compete in a market which has changed since it left a decade ago.

Westin was in Singapore until 2002, in the form of The Westin Stamford and The Westin Plaza at the Raffles City complex, now Swissotel the Stamford and Fairmont Singapore respectively.

Asked to compare the new Westin, which will open in the last quarter of 2013 (TTG Asia e-Daily, October 11), with the old, Vincent Ong, director brand management Asia-Pacific of Sheraton & Westin, said The Westin Stamford did not have programmes such as Superfoods menu, WestinWorkout gym, The Heavenly Spa by Westin and nature-inspired design aesthetics, all now part of the brand’s ‘wellness’ DNA.

Westin, he said, was all about catering to the “I” in individuals, so that every guest would leave feeling better than when he arrived. Starwood Hotels & Resorts had been sharpening the brand’s positioning since 2005, along with creating distinct personalities for its other brands such as Sheraton, Ong said, during a media launch of the Westin Singapore comeback on Monday.

The hotel will occupy the 32nd to 46th floors of Asia Square Tower 2, featuring 305 rooms and the highest hotel lobby in the city. It will also have four F&B outlets and a 480m2 Banquet Hall.

The hotel is owned by an MGPA managed fund. MGPA managing director James David said Westin fitted Asia Square’s ‘Work, Play, Live, Grow’ proposition well.

AS BANGKOK races to prevent floodwaters from rushing down from the central plains to the inner city in less than 48 hours, the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) has reiterated that majority of the tourist attractions in the country are operating as usual.

According to TAT governor Suraphon Svetasreni, of the more than 6,000 tourist sites around the country, only 40 attractions – including the UNESCO World Heritage Ayutthaya Historical park – are hit by flood waters. Most of these are located in the ancient Thai capital.

Attractions in key destinations such as Bangkok, Pattaya, Hua Hin, Chiang Mai, Phuket and Koh Samui continue to operate normally. All airports, including Suvarnabhumi Airport in the capital, are also running as usual.

TAT is urging travellers and the travel trade to monitor developments via its offical website, www.thailandtourismupdate.com.

To illustrate that key tourist attractions are still business as usual, a mass Thai-style wedding ceremony for 100 inbound Chinese couples will proceed tomorrow as scheduled.

The event is jointly organised by TAT, the Shanghai Worker Travel Service and Good Luck Express at the Nong Nooch Tropical Garden, located near Pattaya, around 1.5 hours by car from Bangkok.

By Sirima Eamtako

A MUCH-anticipated tourism campaign to increase Sri Lanka’s global visibility (TTG Asia e-Daily, July 20) has been postponed indefinitely in a dispute over costs and prioritisation.

The campaign was supposed to kick off this month, with efforts earmarked including promotional activities through traditional media, as well as the Internet and social media.

“Except for media advertising, we are proceeding with what we have been doing (previously) – web marketing, fam tours and social marketing,” said Sri Lanka Tourism chairman Nalaka Godahewa, adding that the country’s annual promotional budget, approximately 100 million rupees (less than US$1 million), was hardly enough for a media campaign.

One hotelier, who declined to be named, said: “The (Sri Lankan) Treasury says the product (infrastructure) needs to be developed before money is spent on promotion. The real reason is that the state is short of cash for promotion.”

“We are compelled to plough in our own money to promote our properties and also the destination,” the hotelier added.

Malin Hapugoda, managing director of Colombo-based Aitken Spence Hotels, is another lamenting Sri Lanka’s lack of overseas promotion since the end of the civil war.

“We need to be visible. We were seen as a cheap destination during the conflict—a perception we need to change,” he said. “While beach tourism will be our bread and butter since we are an island, we also need to attract the top end.”

THE ST. REGIS brand is set to make its debut in Shenzhen with the opening of a new hotel atop the Kingkey 100 building by year-end.

Located in the middle of Shenzhen’s Caiwuwei financial district, the St. Regis Shenzhen will occupy the top 28 floors of the Kingkey 100 building.

“We are looking forward to introducing the St. Regis brand to Shenzhen and southern China,” said Stephen Ford, general manager of The St. Regis Shenzhen.

The hotel will offer 257 guest rooms and 40 suites, a spa on the 75th floor, an indoor swimming pool, as well as 2,100m2 of meeting space including a ballroom and eight smaller rooms.

F&B options at the hotel will include a Chinese restaurant offering private dining, an all-day-dining restaurant serving international cuisine, a Mediterranean outlet, and several bars and lounges.

KINGFISHER Airlines has launched daily services from the three South Indian cities of Kochi, Thiruvananthapuram and Tiruchirapalli to Colombo.

The flights are operated using ATR 72-500 aircraft.

Manoj Chacko, executive vice president, commercial, Kingfisher Airlines, said: “The addition of these new routes further strengthens our route network and we now offer enhanced connectivity especially into and out of South India.”

Kingfisher Airlines flies to 59 Indian cities and eight international destinations. The carrier operates with a fleet of 66 aircraft.

THE INDONESIA Ministry of Culture and Tourism will cease to function as the government authority overseeing cultural norms and values, as part of an on-going cabinet reshuffle which saw the appointment of Sapta Nirwandar as vice minister of tourism last week (TTG Asia e-Daily, October 14).

The Ministry of Culture and Tourism’s role as the government agency responsible for national cultural development will be transferred to the Ministry of Education.

Dr Wiendu Nuryanti, currently professor of architecture and tourism planning with the department of architecture at Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta, and senior consultant with the Ministry of Culture & Tourism, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Women’s Affairs and the Ministry of State Enterprises, has been earmarked for the post of vice minister of culture.

Meanwhile, Minister of Culture and Tourism Jero Wacik revealed that the tourism authority had been designated a new role—to develop the country’s creative economy.

“There is a relatively new world economic movement and development, and that is the creative economy. The (Indonesia) President wants this sector to be developed very seriously. This will be incorporated with the tourism sector,” he said.

According to Wacik, Indonesia’s creative industry has the potential to generate up to 100 trillion rupiah (US$11.2 billion) annually. Currently, it contributes some 80 trillion rupiah per year, he added.

DEUTSCHE Bahn (DB Bahn), the German national rail operator, has appointed GSAs in Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore as part of efforts to increase its Asia-Pacific customer base.

Bangkok-based Magellan Corporation was chosen as its Thailand representative in March this year, while Deks Air Travel & Tours was installed as its GSA for Singapore (TTG Asia e-Daily, June 27) and Malaysia one month later.

Rudi Fisher, who was appointed as head of DB Bahn sales for Asia in January, said the regional expansion actually started about two years ago, with representatives previously being appointed in Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Taiwan, the UAE and Vietnam.

Australia, China, India, Japan and South Korea have been identified as the main markets for DB bahn in Asia-Pacific, while Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia and Taiwan have been earmarked as emerging markets, Fisher added.

OUTRIGGER Hotels & Resorts has entered into an agreement to purchase the management rights and associated real estate assets of Holiday Inn Surfers Paradise.

The sale includes the management rights from Colryan for up to 414 hotel rooms, and the real estate assets from Seasilver Hotels comprising reception, conferencing areas, and restaurant and bar.

The deal is expected to be completed by end-2011 or early-2012, after which the property will be rebranded Outrigger Surfers Paradise.

The addition of Outrigger Surfers Paradise boosts Outrigger’s Australia portfolio to four properties, offering a total of 1,000 rooms.

RED Planet Hotels has reported over 3,000 rooms under development for the Tune Hotels brand in a portfolio of 19 properties spanning three countries – Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia.

The announcement comes exactly 12 months after the hotel management company passed the 1,000-room mark, posting growth of 200 per cent over the past year.

Red Planet, which has a franchise agreement with Tune Hotels, and operates its portfolio under the Tune brand, will have six Tune Hotels open by March next year, and 15 properties operational by December 2012.

Red Planet CEO Tim Hansing said: “This year has been a year of acquiring and building. We will continue with this pace of growth for the foreseeable future. In December we will open our first Tune Hotel in Thailand, after which we will open an average of one hotel every month.”

Hansing said the company would use revenue from the soon-to-be operating hotels to invest and increase its room inventory further – targeted to increase by a minimum of 2,000 rooms per year over the next five years.

“Once this opening schedule is underway we will look to raise additional funds to allow our pace of strategic growth to increase so we can open a hotel every two weeks,” Hansing said.

Red Planet will soon have sites for hotel development in China, which will also be operated under the Tune brand.

XIXUAN Spa Hotel Hangzhou opened its doors on August 1.

The 68-room luxury boutique hotel, one of three inaugural properties currently being managed by Xixuan Spa Hotels, features a 2,500m2 underground medispa—a relatively new concept in China—where guests are able to access aesthetic, wellness and beauty treatments to stave off the effects of aging.

The hotel’s two restaurants serve a mix of Eastern and Western dishes infused with organic ingredients, while a three-storey library housing a 6,000-book collection doubles as an event space.

The concept of a medispa hotel materialised when Susan Lo, founder and CEO, Xixuan Spa Hotels, discovered that a growing number of wealthy Chinese nationals were heading to Europe for beauty and wellness treatments.

“I saw the opportunity to bring these therapies back to China,” she explained. “I am not saying don’t go to Europe, but now, you will be able have follow-up treatments without the need to head abroad.”

Lo added: “Our primary target market is affluent individuals who reside in China who want to get away for a short break. We are also targeting tourists from around the region, including Singapore, where there are direct flights to Hangzhou.”

Expansion plans are on the cards for Xixuan Spa Hotels, with Lo envisioning 10 openings in China over the next five years.

“I am working with developers to open four more hotels under the Xixuan label along the coastline from Hangzhou up to Nanjing,” she said. “The Ningbo government has also just invited us to manage a hot spring resort as well as another medispa.”

Xixuan Spa Hotels’ other existing properties are in Chengde and Huangshan.