Ovolo Hotels eschews meat in favour of sustainable dining
In conjunction with World Vegetarian Day on October 1, Ovolo Hotels has launched the Year of the Veg, becoming the first hotel group to go completely vegetarian across all its restaurants, bars, and food services for an entire year.
Inspired to act on climate change and environmental conservation, and in light of more consumers opting for vegetarian cuisine, the hotel group is phasing out meat to focus on creating plant-based cuisine instead.
For Ovolo in Hong Kong, the movement towards vegetarianism began at Veda at Ovolo Central which was Hong Kong’s first vegetarian hotel restaurant. Following suit, Komune, the all-day dining destination at Ovolo Southside, is cutting meat from its menus, and the hotel will soon debut a new fully vegetarian restaurant concept.
The movement will extend to Australia, with Ovolo’s Australian locations also going plant-based for the year. Monster Kitchen & Bar (Ovolo Nishi, Canberra), Za Za Ta (Ovolo The Valley, Brisbane), and Mr Percy (Ovolo 1888 Darling Harbour, Sydney) are also debuting new all-vegetarian menus. They will join Alibi Bar & Kitchen at Ovolo Woolloomooloo, which set the standard as the first 100 per cent plant-based hotel restaurant in Australia and New Zealand.
To further the plant-based cause, Ovolo is also revamping its room service menus, allowing guests to enjoy an array of vegetarian dishes in the comfort of their guestroom during this period.
Ovolo Group’s founder and CEO, Girish Jhunjhnuwala, said: “We want to be conscious about what we’re consuming and practice sustainability as much as we can because we believe this can have an enormous impact on the environment and humanity at large. To that end, we’re evolving our food offerings so that our guests can continue enjoying great dining experiences in a more sustainable manner.”
Year of the Veg is the latest in a series of eco-friendly initiatives that Ovolo Hotels has implemented over the last year. This includes eliminating single-use bathroom amenities made of plastic, replacing plastic straws with environmentally-friendly alternatives, and using reusable woven bags for slippers.
Banyan Tree branches further into Indonesia
As part of its regional expansion strategy, Banyan Tree Group is set to extend its multi-brand presence in Indonesia with five new hotels in the pipeline including three from the group’s upcoming new nature-centric brand extension, Banyan Tree Escape.
Upcoming properties comprise Banyan Tree Nipah, Lombok and Angsana Saranam, Bali; alongside potentially three hideaway resorts under its Banyan Tree Escape brand.
Set to open in 2Q2021, Angsana Saranam, Bali will be a 82-key wellbeing resort that will feature an Angsana Spa and wellbeing facilities such as a multifunctional activity centre, movement space and vitality pool for hydrotherapy and aqua activities. An organic farm will also feature harvest-to-dish activities.
Banyan Tree Nipah, Lombok will be a 72-key luxury beach resort featuring suites and villas with infinity pools and a hilltop oceanfront lobby. Its three dining venues will comprise an all-day restaurant, lobby lounge and beach shack. Scheduled to open in 2022, it will include the Banyan Tree Spa with wellness suites and hydrothermal facilities, alongside a beachfront multi-event space.
In light of the post-Covid quest for increased emphasis on wellbeing and sustainability, the group has unveiled an upcoming new brand extension, Banyan Tree Escape, with its first hotel to debut in the heart of Ubud, Bali in 2Q2021. Featuring its signature “no walls, no doors” experience concept, the brand aims to bring travellers on “a rewilding renewal through immersion in nature”. Further destinations include a private island and tropical rainforests in Lombok, West Nusa Tenggara; and North Sumatra.
Additionally, the group said that it is in discussions to open more Cassia properties, following its first Cassia Bintan in Indonesia; and Dhawa hotels in the country’s super-priority destinations of Borobudur at Central Java, Labuan Bajo at East Nusa Tenggara, Mandalika in WNT, Lake Toba in North Sumatra, Likupang in North Sulawesi, and Bangka Belitung.
Malaysia Airlines embarks on urgent restructuring
Malaysia Airlines (MAB) will be undergoing a comprehensive restructuring of its business and capital structure, and has reached out to its lessors, creditors, and key suppliers recently as part of that exercise.
Its statement comes after a Reuters report stating that its parent company, Malaysia Aviation Group (MAG), said in a letter to lessors that the group is unlikely to be able to make payments owed after November unless it receives more funding from state fund Khazanah.
The report quoted insiders as saying that the letter follows the national carrier’s request to its lessors for steep discounts on aircraft rentals as part of a broad restructuring plan.
The announcement of the restructuring exercise is the latest cost-cutting move by the airline as it seeks to weather the fallout posed by the unprecedented Covid-19 crisis. Since March, measures taken by the MAG to cut costs and conserve cash include introducing extensive salary cuts for the entire management team and pilots, introducing no-pay leave, seeking payment deferrals, and renegotiating contracts.
The resurgence of the coronavirus in some markets, the lack of a vaccine that needs to be widely distributed, and tight border restrictions remaining in place for its key markets will “hamper the return of international leisure and business travel demand for MAG in the next couple of years,” the airline said in a press statement.
As such, MAG said that it will take drastic steps in revising its long-term business plan further to ensure the group’s relevance and survival. This includes reworking its network and fleet plans to be able to cope with not only the uncertain and volatile aviation landscape, but also likely softer traffic demand for the foreseeable future, it added.
The airline said that it intends for the restructuring exercise to be completed over the next few months, but does not rule out taking “more drastic measures” if that outcome is not possible. It also said that it is committed to carrying out its restructuring exercise “in a fair manner through any form of mechanism that is appropriate”.
Pandemic accelerates Mekong’s sustainable tourism development
The Mekong Tourism Advisory Group (MeTAG), which was established three years ago by the Mekong Tourism Coordinating Office (MTCO) to connect public and private sectors across the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) to drive sustainable and responsible travel, is seeing its work accelerated by the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.
Jens Thraenhart, MTCO executive director, told TTG Asia: “MeTAG wasn’t designed with Covid-19 in mind but has become more relevant than ever now.”
Since the outbreak, the group has provided a vital platform for key industry stakeholders and governments across the GMS to discuss recovery plans, exchange success stories, collaborate and provide support.
In August, MTCO conducted its first Virtual Destination Mekong Summit, a free-to-attend series of talks on how destinations will survive these challenging times and prepare for an accelerated recovery.
Thraenhart added that much of the group’s work to celebrate and promote leading responsible tourism initiatives through its various programmes has become more important.
These include Experience Mekong Collection, Experience Mekong Showcases and Mekong Heroes, which throw the spotlight on innovative sustainable programmes and trailblazers within the industry – all marketing tools being used to entice travellers once borders open.
Said Thraenhart: “We have been creating these programmes to build resilience in the case of a crisis for the last few years. We now have Covid-19 and a strong strategy for sustainable tourism that is globally unique.”
He added that group members will continue to work together to use this time to build further infrastructures, programmes and strategies for resilience across the GMS to be stronger in the future.
TTG Conversations: Five questions with Tan Kok Liang, Malaysian Association of Tour & Travel Agents
Inbound demand for experiential travel is set to grow once Malaysia reopens her borders to foreign tourists, so will interest for nature-based destinations, predicts Tan Kok Liang, president of the Malaysian Association of Tour & Travel Agents.
In this new episode of TTG Conversations: Five questions video series, Tan points out that the travel trade should start developing more immersive and sustainable packages in order to take advantage of new travel trends in the post Covid-19 era.
Through pictures, he shares successful, immersive community-based tourism packages in off-the beaten tourist areas in Sabah which tour operators are selling to the domestic market currently, and later, when the border reopens, to international inbound tourists. He believes such packages will also appeal to the niche, high-end travellers looking for hidden gems.
Trickle of tourists as Boracay reopens to domestic travellers
Boracay has reopened to tourists from the general community quarantine (GCQ) areas on Thursday (October 1), signalling a significant stride towards restarting the Philippines’ tourism industry amid the pandemic.
The island has been open to visitors from Western Visayas since June, and tourism secretary Bernadette Romulo-Puyat said the island’s reopening to a wider market marks “a crucial first step” for jumpstarting domestic tourism recovery across the country. This gives the country’s tourism industry a glimmer of hope, especially for those counting on tourism to survive, she added.
“What could be a better way to herald the revival of Philippine tourism than the reopening of the world-renowned Boracay Island?” she said.
On its reopening day, the island welcomed 19 tourists, including seven from metro Manila and five from Aklas, according to data from the municipal tourism office of Malay.
Despite the low visitor count, Puyat told The Philippine Star that the gradual entry of tourists on the island would allow the government to test its health and safety protocols.
Having welcomed Western Visayas visitors since June, the island has reported zero Covid-19 cases, according to Puyat, promising government support in ensuring that health and safety protocols are in place.
The Department of Tourism (DOT), the Boracay Inter-Agency Task Force (BIATF), along with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources secretary Roy Cimatu and Department of Interior and Local Government secretary Eduardo Ano, the province of Aklan and the municipality of Malay have implemented enhanced hygiene and safety protocols in entry points, accommodations and activities, Puyat said.
“We advise all tourists to be on strict quarantine immediately after the (Covid-19) test and until the time of travel to the island. This is to help ensure that they will remain free of Covid-19 before they visit Boracay,” she added.
Puyat reiterated that while the age restriction has been relaxed to allow travellers below 21 and above 60 years old, only those without underlying medical conditions and with documentation of negative Covid-19 test results taken 48 hours before travel to the island will be allowed to enter the island through the Godofredo P. Ramos Airport in Caticlan.
A confirmed booking in a DOT-accredited accommodation establishment, air tickets, and documentation of the negative Covid-19 test result should be submitted online, through http://aklan.gov.ph, for the approval of the Aklan provincial government. Each visitor who is cleared to travel to the island will then be issued a unique personal QR code for monitoring.
The tourism chief urged the island’s guests to comply to the health and safety protocols in order to ensure the success of Boracay’s reopening. “We urge our visitors to be responsible tourists. Follow the guidelines, respect the rules. We can never be too complacent, even on vacation, we must adhere to the minimum health protocols. Let’s wear our mask when possible,” said Puyat.
Meanwhile, DOT-accredited hotels will each have a designated health and safety officer who will call the Boracay Covid Hotline number 152 should any of the guests exhibit symptoms of the virus. The data from the QR code system will be used to identify the close contacts, should a guest test positive for the coronavirus while on the island.
Enchanted Princess joins Princess Cruises fleet
The newly completed Enchanted Princess has been delivered to Princess Cruises in an official handover ceremony live-streamed from the Fincantieri shipyard in Monfalcone, Italy.
The ceremony was virtually attended by executives from Carnival Corporation including chairman of the board Micky Arison, president and CEO Arnold Donald; Stein Kruse, group CEO of Princess Cruises, Holland America Line, Seabourn, Carnival Australia and Carnival UK; and Jan Swartz, group president of Princess Cruises and Carnival Australia. Fincantieri was represented by CEO Giuseppe Bono.
The 145,000-ton, 3,660-guest ship is the 100th cruise ship built by Italian shipbuilder Fincantieri, and its finalisation marks the first ship to be completed during the time of Covid.
Enchanted Princess will introduce new dining experiences, the most pools and whirlpool hot tubs ever, entertainment venues, and the Sky Suites, offering expansive views from the largest balconies at sea.
Enchanted Princess is scheduled to arrive in North America in December 2020, for a season of Caribbean cruises.
For the true costs of Thailand’s 2020 tourism retraction, look beyond the tourism sector
In the past decade, the Asia-Pacific region established itself as the world’s largest, fastest-growing, and most diverse tourism market. In Thailand, the tourism sector supported almost 20 per cent of national GDP in 2019, and one in five jobs, according to the WTTC.
This year, of course, the tourism sector has come to face with its biggest-ever challenge – the coronavirus.
In Oxford Economics’ latest projections for the travel and tourism sector in Thailand, we expect the volume of international visitor arrivals to fall by more than half in 2020, compared with last year. In our central scenario, we do not see tourism spending recovering to 2019 levels until 2024. That means a 4.8 trillion baht loss of visitor spending in Thailand’s economy compared with our pre-pandemic outlook.
For tourism providers in Thailand and across Asia-Pacific, this is a devastating blow. Our modelling identifies 40 million “jobs at risk” in the wider Asia-Pacific tourism sector. For workers and business owners in this sector, a return of tourism expenditure could not come soon enough. What is increasingly clear is that the rebuilding of the travel and tourism sector will be essential for the wider economic recovery of the region.
Airbnb’s role in Thailand, as part of the wider short-term rental sector, provides a useful example of how tourism spending manifests itself broadly around the economy. We recently worked with Airbnb to estimate its total economic impact across 13 Asia-Pacific countries in the five years preceding the coronavirus travel disruption. This included detailed modelling of the direct economic impacts of the spending Airbnb facilitates, and the indirect economic impacts it creates through supply chain effects and wage expenditure.
A little more than one third of Airbnb’s total economic footprint in Thailand (worth around 44 billion baht in 2019) can be attributed to this “direct impact” – that’s the value added by businesses and workers in the first line of tourism activity: the bars and restaurants, retailers, and taxi drivers. The remainder is generated by the “indirect” value added along the supply chains of these tourism providers, and from the wage expenditure of those workers earning incomes from it. And these wider impacts fall widely across sectors and are spread widely across states and regions.
In Thailand, only one quarter of Airbnb’s economic impact falls in Bangkok (Airbnb’s biggest local market in Asia-Pacific). The lion’s share is distributed around second-tier and smaller tourism destinations, including those with no tourism footfall to speak of at all.
Similarly, the decline in tourism has not only been felt by the unfortunate staff and operators of those frontline tourism providers, but also in the transport, retail, manufacturing, and agricultural jobs that service this tourism demand indirectly.
As our study for Airbnb highlights, there are more than 925,000 workers in Asia-Pacific whose employment was supported by Airbnb-related tourism alone in 2019. More than half of these workers benefited through indirect impacts. They might not make the connection themselves, but their employment and prosperity are tied in part to the recovery and trajectory of the tourism sector.
So, how can a recovery in travel and tourism be accelerated? When producing our forecasts, we tend to closely observe three core obstacles: physical travel restrictions, depressed economic conditions, and lasting impact the coronavirus will leave on traveller confidence.
It is increasingly clear that the early revival of short-haul and domestic travel along safe and trusted, low-risk travel corridors will be key to recovery, before a broader normalisation of tourism flows can be established in the years to come.
In many ways, platforms like Airbnb are well placed to help accelerate Asia-Pacific’s tourism recovery. There are five reasons why:
- Facilitating and inspiring domestic trips: As households look to substitute longhaul for short-haul and international for domestic trips, platforms like Airbnb can help connect that demand with new and unique alternatives.
- Supporting a youth-led recovery: The coronavirus has disproportionately affected older travellers in terms of health impacts and the willingness to travel. Young people will be critical to tourism’s recovery, particularly in the early stages, and the majority of Airbnb’s users are aged under 30.
- Helping to rebuild international travel as an export sector: Airbnb’s community model helps sustain traveller interest through the restricted travel period, and therefore, smooth and catalyse their return to the market once conditions normalise.
- Leveraging analytics to adapt to a changing landscape: With such a rapidly shifting landscape, agility in the current market is key. Hosts and travellers will benefit from the platform’s ability to respond quickly to the shifting trends and preferences.
- Finally, agility and flexibility in supply: Early signs of travel recovery have indicated a shift in demand for travel destinations, compared with the pre-coronavirus norms. Anchoring accommodation supply too heavily to pre-coronavirus tourism infrastructure could therefore act as a drag on recovery. Airbnb’s agile and flexibly supply of hosts can help facilitate the return of tourism spending more swiftly, and the wide range of jobs and incomes it supports.
In a post-pandemic world, a full recovery of the tourism industry will likely take time. There have been some encouraging signs of recovery in short-haul and domestic trips, but industry players across the board will need to do their part to deliver the sector’s broader revival. Platforms like Airbnb can play a pivotal role in supporting these efforts and reintroducing the many gains of tourism to the Thai economy.
Nikko grows China footprint with fifth Jiangsu property
Slated to open in 2023, Hotel Nikko Changshu will mark the fifth property of Okura Nikko Hotel Management in Jiangsu Province, further boosting the Japan-based company’s presence in China.
Hotel Nikko Changshu will be located at Changshu National New & Hi-Tech Zone in Changshu city, one of the county-level cities in the Suzhou of southeastern Jiangsu Province.
The company has contracted with Changshu Kuncheng Development Investment to manage the new property through its joint venture BTG Nikko International Hotel Management.
Hotel Nikko Changshu will offer 288 guestrooms, each with a standard area of about 40m2, including 14 suite rooms. Onsite facilities will include a Japanese teppanyaki restaurant, a Chinese restaurant, all-day dining, lobby lounge, a fitness centre and indoor pool, alongside a banquet hall and five conference rooms.
Centara Hotels & Resorts has kicked off the Even Stronger Together promotion campaign, offering staycationers extensive privileges such as daily hotel credits and shopping vouchers across all its properties worldwide.
Guests can enjoy reduced room rates ranging from 720 baht (US$23) to 3,120 baht per night, with daily hotel credits of up to 2,020 baht to spend on spa, food and drinks. They will also get Central department store gift vouchers of up to 1,600 baht per stay. Other perks include free early check-in from 09.00 and late check-out up to 21.00, subject to availability for stays from Sundays to Thursdays.
The promotion is inclusive of daily breakfast for two, with a half-board upgrade available for stays of four or more nights at select hotels. Up to two children stay for free when sharing existing bedding with parents.
Even Stronger Together can be booked from now until November 30, 2020, for stays through year-end.