Thai firm building up to 15 new budget hotels in Philippines

MANILA, Philippines — The Erawan Group Plc., Thailand’s leading hotel developer, is planning to build up to 15 budget hotels in the Philippines over the next five years.

Kamonwan Wipulakorn, president and director of The Erawan Group, said the company is allotting P4 billion over the next five years to build 12 to 15 budget hotels under the Hop Inn brand in Manila, Cebu and Davao.

“We would like to have maybe around 10 hotels in Manila and we will build two hotels in Cebu and we are also looking at Davao,” Wipulakorn said.

For next year, the company is slated to open three more hotels — one in Aseana, a site in Alabang and another in Tomas Morato in Quezon City.

At present, The Erawan Group has two Hop Inn Hotels in the Philippines — one in Ermita in Manila and the other in Makati.

Wipulakorn said her company is optimistic about its operations in the Philippines because of the country’s robust economy and growing tourism industry.

“Right now, the Philippines has the highest economic growth and also the highest development that is why we choose to come to the Philippines because for us we look for high growth market,” Wipulakorn said.

She added the Philippine market is “very exciting” like Thailand compared to other countries in ASEAN.

“Right now we only focus in Thailand and the Philippines, we don’t see other country as exciting as Thailand and the Philippines,” Wipulakorn said.

“When we plan to come here we actually targeting for domestic market because it’s a very big market, but I think with the location that we have we also attract foreign arrivals as well. So right now about 50 percent is domestic market and the rest would be foreign markets,” Wipulakorn said.

She added  that its first Hop Inn Hotel in Malate, Manila is performing “very well” with an occupancy rate of about 80 percent.

“In the next three years, we see that the revenue contribution from Philippine hotels will go up to 10 perfect of our total portfolio. That is significant to us, right now its very small,” Wipulakorn said.

Erawan is Thailand’s leading hotel investment company with diversified hotel portfolio fro luxury to midscale, economy and budget segment across Thailand’s key destinations and ASEAN.

Currently, its hotels are under the hotel agreement partnership with world-class hotel operators including Hyatt, Marriott, Accor, IHG and its own hotel brand Hop Inn.