CENTARA Hotels & Resorts has opened two new hotels in Pattaya, growing its portfolio in the city to three properties.

The Nova Hotel & Spa Pattaya and Centra Pattaya Resort are both located in central Pattaya.

Suthikiati Chirathivat, chairman, Centara Hotels & Resorts, said: “We have been delighted with the response we have had to the five-star Centara Grand Mirage Beach Resort Pattaya, and our two new hotels are strategically in the four-star and mid-range categories.”

Nova Hotel & Spa Pattaya, part of the Centara Boutique Collection, offers 79 rooms and suites, two F&B outlets, a swimming pool, a Spa Cenvaree and a fitness centre.

Centra Pattaya Resort offers 152 rooms and suites, an all-day-dining restaurant, a bar, a swimming pool and a fitness centre.

Centra Pattaya also features a meeting room which can hold up to 140 persons seated theatre-style, 90 people in a classroom setup and 160 persons for a reception.

HOTELS in Kandy are overflowing with tourists during this year’s Esala Perahera (Festival of the Tooth) which began on Thursday.

Held every July or August in the central Sri Lankan city, the Bhuddist festival features a multitude of dancers wearing elegant costumes and elephants adorned with lavish garments.

Rodney Armstrong, resident manager, Mahaweli Reach Hotel and president of the Kandy Hotels Association, said the event was getting more popular each year, especially after the end of the civil war.

Armstrong said around 8,000-10,000 foreign visitors are expected to witness the 10-day event, which ends this year on August 14. Kandy only has about 1,200-1,300 keys inclusive of hotels and guesthouses. “Over the last six to seven days, all hotels here have been fully booked, and no rooms are available,” he said.

Vasantha Leelananda, head of inbound, Leisure Inbound at John Keells Holdings, said that this year’s festival received more promotion as a religious event in Asian source markets such as Japan.

Visitors from traditional markets such as the UK and Germany attend the festival as part of their regular tours.

HAVING received a boost with Germany recently lifting its travel advisory (TTG Asia e-Daily, July 29), Jammu & Kashmir tourism authorities are making a concerted effort to woo tourists back to the once-popular region through infrastructural improvements and destination marketing initiatives.

The northernmost state in India has an annual budget of US$27 million for tourism infrastructure development and marketing. This year, the Indian government has sanctioned an additional US$41.5 million under the Prime Minister’s Reconstruction Programme for the development of 59 tourism infrastructural projects in the state.

US$4.9 million of this supplementary budget is being spent on the development of three tourist circuits: Lakhanpur-Basohli-Bani-Sarthal, Bhaderwah-Kishtwar-Sinthan-Srinagar and Jammu-Rajouri-Poonch. Another US$3.4 million is being pumped into 25 villages being developed as rural tourism destinations.

Jammu and Kashmir tourism & culture minister, Nawang Rigzin, told TTG Asia e-daily: “We’re making the best efforts to revive tourism to our region and are not setting any targets yet. We request that the travel trade help promote the state and aid people in getting back their livelihood, which largely depends on tourism.”

He added: “Our roadshows in Singapore, Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur last month had very good response from the travel trade. They were keen to understand and promote Jammu & Kashmir. We’re also participating at the Geneva festival in Switzerland (August 4 to 14) along with India Tourism.”

Jammu & Kashmir is planning to host fam trips for Western diplomats from the first week of September.

Most of the 23,000 international arrivals to the state last year were from South-east Asia.

By Anand & Madhura Katti

THAILAND’S Ministry of Tourism and Sports (MoTS) is revising its budget plan for the next fiscal year in a bid to gain an extra 10.6 billion baht (US$354 million) in funds from the new government.

MoTS was previously allocated a budget of 16.6 billion baht by the immediate past cabinet for the period October 2011 to September 2012, much less than the 30 billion baht it was seeking.

MoTS permanent-secretary, Sombat Kuruphan, said the revised figure of around 27.2 billion baht would help propel the country’s tourism marketing and development efforts to meet the government’s annual target of 30 million arrivals and two trillion baht in tourism revenue.

The ministry plans to allocate some 3.6 billion baht to the Department of Tourism and about 8.6 billion baht to the Tourism Authority of Thailand. It will also ask the new government to boost the Thailand Tourism Fund from 50 million to 300 million baht.

Sombat added that the extra funds would help to prepare the country’s tourism industry for integration into the ASEAN Economic Community by 2015, the year from which MoTS is hoping to be granted an improved annual budget of 100 billion baht (TTG Asia e-Daily, July 8).

HILTON Worldwide and Sands China, a subsidiary of global resort developer Las Vegas Sands, have signed a franchise agreement to open the first Conrad hotel in Macau.

The Conrad Macao, Cotai Strip will form part of the Sands Cotai Central integrated resort development that includes meeting and convention space and two casinos.

Comprising 636 rooms, the Conrad Macau is scheduled to open in the first quarter of 2012 at Cotai Central. The property will offer four F&B outlets; including Chinese and Macanese specialty restaurants, a health club, a spa and an outdoor pool.

Andrew Clough, senior vice president, development, Middle East & Asia Pacific, Hilton Worldwide, said: “This is a key project for us as it marks the entry of the Conrad brand, one of Hilton Worldwide’s luxury segment brands, into an exciting new market like Macau.

The Conrad Macao joins existing Conrad properties in Hong Kong and Sanya Haitang Bay, and seven under construction in Dalian, Beijing, Suzhou, Guangzhou, Tianjin, Qingdao, and Xiamen in Greater China.

HAYMAN Great Barrier Reef has re-opened following a five-month closure to repair the damage caused by a series of tropical cyclones earlier in the year.

Owned and operated by Mulpha Australia, and a member of The Leading Hotels of the World, Hayman now features a recreated 16-hectare garden with some 33,000 new plants and 327 new plant species.

Besides revamped restaurant concepts including the beachfront Azure, offering breakfast and evening grills, and Fontaine, offering contemporary Australian cuisine, the resort has also introduced upgraded facilities featuring floodlit tennis courts, squash courts, a personal training room, a walking trail, a basketball court and a golf putting green and driving range.

In terms of accommodation, there are eight new beach villas, each with a private pool and day bed in an open-air gallery, a private terrace and an outdoor shower.

TIGER Airways has posted a first-quarter loss of S$20.6 million (US$17 million), compared to a net profit of S$1.9 million a year ago.

The carrier attributed the dismal result to a combination of a seasonally weaker first quarter, volatile fuel prices and disruptions to its Australian operations due to the Chilean volcanic ash cloud in June (TTG Asia e-Daily, June 21).

Australia’s Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) has grounded Tiger Airway’s Australia operations since July 2 over safety concerns (TTG Asia e-Daily, July 7), a move which has so far cost the airline S$17.7 million in sales and S$1.7 million in ancillary revenue.

The financial impact of the grounding will only be reflected in Tiger Airway’s second quarter results.

Tiger Airways predicted that the first quarter loss, coupled with the suspension of domestic services in Australia for more than a month, would most likely result in its Australia operations reporting a net loss for this financial year.

CITILINK launched yesterday a new business plan and branding in anticipation of plans to operate independently from parent airline Garuda Indonesia.

Garuda president and CEO, Emirsyah Satar, said the new livery marks a new era for the low-cost carrier (LCC), which is preparing to spin off from Garuda by early next year. “There is a big potential market for LCCs, and we would like to revive Citilink,” he said.

Citilink, which currently contributes five per cent of Garuda Indonesia Group’s business, is aiming to increase its share to 30 per cent by 2015, according to Citilink vice president strategic and Garuda executive VP, Elisa Lumbantoruan.

To facilitate expansion, the airline will get five new A320s this year, with the first scheduled to arrive in September. Another 25 new A320s will be delivered from 2014, plus another 25 on option.

Apart from domestic expansion, Citilink’s regional growth will target neighbouring destinations such as Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Australia.

Garuda has appointed former Viva Macau chief executive, Con Korfiatis, as advisor to the board of directors to help oversee Citilink’s expansion.

Lumbantoruan said: “With the new aircraft on order and the plan to spin the airline off, Citilink will become one of the top LCCs in Indonesia and the region.”

Citilink is expected to become a public company by 2015.

BEST Western International will open in 2013 a new five-star hotel in Ayer Keroh near the Malacca International Trade Centre (MITC).

The Best Western MITC Ayer Keroh will be branded a Best Western Premier. Besides 301 guest rooms, villas and suites varying in size from 37-325m2, the property will feature six meeting rooms and a ballroom with space for up to 800 persons.

There will also be three F&B outlets, a Bhuvana spa, a swimming pool, a gym, an executive lounge and a business centre.

Glenn de Souza, Best Western International’s vice president International Operations-Asia and the Middle East, said: “Strategically speaking in terms of location, product and brand expansion, this is a valuable addition to Best Western’s growing Malaysia portfolio.”

“Along with the well-established tourist flow Malacca already enjoys, the growing MICE sector in Malaysia will be a key focus for the new Best Western Premier.”

COMPETITION in the Asia-Pacific online distribution arena is heating up, with homestay booking websites like Wimdu launching operations in the region.

Italy-based Wimdu, which made its global debut in May, is an online platform that facilitates booking of privately owned accommodation by independent travellers. The platform manages the booking and payment processes online, making it efficient for hosts to manage reservations.

Online peer-to-peer accommodation platforms like Wimdu offer travellers the premise of living like a local, and are an alternative to B2C booking sites such as Zuji and Hotels.com.

Wimdu is the third online homestay portal to expand its reach to Asia-Pacific. The first was US-based Airbnb.com, which expanded to the region in June last year. Arizu, a site targeted at the Chinese market, went live in April 2011.

Steven Kim, co-founder of Wimdu Asia, said: “Today’s travel is not just about staying at a faceless hotel room, Wimdu opens up experiential travel. For instance, some of our listings can be as unusual as a castle in UK for US$12,000 or a hut in the Philippines jungle for just US$6.”

The growth in the global peer-to-peer bookings sector has been promising. According to Airbnb, bookings on its site soared by over 800 per cent between 2009 and 2010.

The proliferation of these homestay platforms in Asia also reflects the wider trend of Asians becoming more receptive towards FIT travel, albeit from a smaller base compared to the US or Europe.

Nonetheless, mainstream booking sites still dominate the online travel market. Data drawn from siteanalytics.com highlights that in June 2011, Airbnb received less than five per cent of the total number of unique visitors generated by Hotels.com.

Still, a spokesperson for Wimdu said the company sees a lot of potential in Asia. To garner a slice of the burgeoning regional FIT market, Wimdu will be rolling out strategies from “a local perspective, addressing all the concerns that a Western strategy might not bring up”.

Besides Singapore, Wimdu plans to expand to Malaysia and Indonesia. It already has a presence in Thailand, Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, the Philippines and Australia.