Posted on October 22, 2015
10:34:00 PM [ BusinessWorld Online ]
AYALA LAND, Inc. (ALI) is
expanding the hotel formats of its homegrown brand as part of a plan to triple
its room count in the next five years.
On the sidelines of the 4th
Asia Pacific Real Estate Investment Summit in Parañaque City yesterday, Ayala
Land Hotels and Resorts Corp. (AHRC) Chief Operating Officer Michael Alexis C.
Legaspi told reporters the property giant is expanding the Seda brand to
include resorts and serviced apartments aside from the regular rooms within the
business hotel.
This is part of ALI’s
on-going construction of projects with nearly 2,000 hotel rooms, which are
slated to open from 2016 to 2018.
Under its Vision 2020, the
company plans to triple its real estate portfolio to 3.6 million square meters
(sq.m.) of shopping space, 1.8 million sq.m. of office space, as well as 6,000
hotel and resort keys.
“The resorts are in El
Nido. We’re looking at other opportunities as well. For the serviced
apartments, we have in Makati, Cebu and we’re also putting up one in BGC
(Bonifacio Global City) -- all under the Seda brand,” Mr. Legaspi said.
The expansion of Seda’s
formats also widens the price ranges of its offerings between P3,000 and
P6,000, he said.
Nine out of the 10 hotels
under construction will carry the Seda brand, with Mandarin Oriental Hotel,
rising at the tip of the Ayala Triangle Gardens, as the lone international
brand.
Two weeks ago, AHRC
announced it would shutter the InterContinental Manila by the end of the year
to give way to a new commercial, mixed-use development as part of the Makati
City redevelopment plan.
“We’re in talks with them
now for other opportunities,” Mr. Legaspi said, referring to the
InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG).
Continued growth in real
estate sales and the double-digit expansion of its leasing and services
businesses lifted the earnings of ALI by 19% to P8.39 billion in the first
semester from a year-ago’s P7.05 billion.
Shares in Ayala Land slid
15 centavos or 0.43% to close at P35 apiece on Thursday. -- Krista Angela M.
Montealegre
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