Standard International has exceeding its budget for 2021 by over 20 per cent on the back of strong US portfolio performance, revealed CEO Amar Lalvani at a virtual press conference on September 9.
The strong domestic tourism performance in the US has led Lalvani to believe that travel and tourism elsewhere will rebound just as positively once international borders reopen along with vaccinations in place.
At the press conference, Lalvani also highlighted the company’s Asian debut with two properties in Thailand. The Thai properties are part of Standard International’s global expansion, which includes 10 projects in Ibiza, Singapore, Melbourne, Lisbon, Dublin, Brussels and Las Vegas between now and 2025.
The Standard, Hua Hin is targeted to open on December 1 with 199 keys, while The Standard, Bangkok Mahanakhon will open as the group’s Asia flagship hotel with 155 keys next year.
“This has been a time of unprecedented crisis for the hospitality industry, and the millions of people around the world who work in the sector. However, we do remain highly optimistic about the future of the (hospitality) industry and our business despite the circumstances,” he said.
“Many sectors have been permanently transformed by Covid-19, but not all transformations are equal.”
Businesses such as retail shops, movie theatres and gyms are easier for consumers to switch with the emergences of online shops like Amazon, streaming services like Netflix, and companies like Peloton which allow people to work-out from respectively, according to Lalvani.
However, leisure travel, meetings, restaurants, spas and sports are not.
“Coming to Thailand, being on the beach, eating Thai food…there is nothing like that. It doesn’t matter how good your Zoom or movie theatre is, nothing can replace that,” he remarked.
Hyatt Regency Phnom Penh has partnered ecoSPIRITS, a company that pioneers the world’s low-carbon method of packaging and distribution for high-end spirits, to establish a sustainable process for its flagship bar, The Attic.
ecoSPIRITS is a closed-loop distribution system which uses a low-waste, low-carbon spirits distribution technology, thereby minimising packaging waste and transport cost, to reduce carbon footprint emissions in the spirits supply chain. Premium spirits are contained in ecoTOTEs, a reusable vessel that carries 4.5 liters of spirit, which bartenders then use to sustainably refill their bottles. Emptied ecoTOTEs are returned, sanitised, fitted with tamper-proof seals and then re-distributed. These containers can be stacked and are shock-resistant, thus reducing wastage from breakages.
By partnering with ecoSPIRITS, Hyatt Regency Phnom Penh aims to reduce 40 per cent of its transport and packaging carbon emissions, including single-use glass wastage.
Herman Kemp, the hotel’s general manager, said the partnership would allow The Attic to “extend its popular sustainable cocktail menu in which all ingredients in the cocktail have zero wastage”.
Hyatt Regency Phnom Penh has been initiating several sustainable processes since its opening in January 2021. The hotel has joined up with Eggscellent, a cage-free chicken farm in Siem Reap; Ocean Gems, a sustainable seafood company; Beyond Meat, a plant-based, vegan meat company; and Moo Moo Farms, a domestic dairy farm. It also has a longstanding partnership with local NGO Eco-Soap Bank to collect used soap from the property’s 247 guestrooms for redistribution to vulnerable communities around South-east Asia and Africa.