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By Chino S. Leyco
THE Philippines posted a record
13,939 rooms last year, a 9.9-percent increase from the 12,683
recorded in year earlier, Trent M. Frankum, general manager of CB
Richard Ellis Philippines, Inc. (CBRE) said.
But Frankum also said these
additional hotel rooms are not enough to meet the growing demand for
more rooms.
Citing the reports of the
Philippine Travel Agencies’ Association (PTAA), he said the
country has diverted over half-a-million foreign visitors to other
destinations in 2006 because of facility problems in key tourist
spots in the country. Owing to lack of hotel rooms and flights into
the domestic tourist destinations, the tourism industry registered
an income loss of $400 million.
“The accommodation capacity of
Boracay and Cebu is maximized, which has become a constraint to
growth and is contrary to the goals of government to increase the
tourist arrivals,” Frankum said.
Although 2006 had been a good
year for Philippine tourism, Frankum said “the steadily upbeat
performance since 2004 must be sustained through the upgrading of
infrastructure, tourism facilities and services in main tourism
destinations.”
And something obviously is being
done as the country is getting investments for new hotel projects.
For one, Ayala Hotels, a
subsidiary of Ayala Land, partnered with Kingdom Hotels for a
$153-million hotel complex within the Ayala Center. This is
equivalent to 300 rooms (for Fairmont Hotel), 30 suites (for Raffles
Hotel) and 189 Raffles-branded private residences to service the
Makati CBD market.
Meanwhile, SM Investments is in
the thick of two hotel developments and has joined forces with
Carlson Hotel Asia Pacific and Accor to develop an aggregate of 350
and 400 hotel rooms for Manila and Cebu.
For the emerging business
district of Alabang, the success of Bellevue Manila Hotel in
Northgate Cyberzone prompted its owners to build a third 25-story
tower that will provide an additional 198 deluxe rooms, at a project
cost of P1.05 billion.
Other hotel projects in the
pipeline are the Eastwood Park Hotel & Residential Suites, a
38-story hotel and condotel project on top of a mall complex at the
heart of Eastwood City, and the proposed Shangri-La Hotels and
Resorts’ six-star hotel on the 1.2-hectare property of BCDA in the
Fort Bonifacio Global City.
With the marked increase in
tourist arrivals in the Visayas, three international hotel and
resort chains plan to set up facilities in the region—the Banyan
Tree Hotels and Resorts, Raffles Hotels and Resorts and Four Seasons
Hotels and Resorts.
Future hotel developments also
include the 616-room Imperial Palace Waterpark Resort and Spa, a
Korean-Filipino venture that broke ground in July 2006 in Maribago,
Lapu-Lapu City, Cebu.
“We are getting a lot of
investment inquiries for hotels, resorts and even golf courses from
European, Middle Eastern and Korean investors,” Frankum said.
Now, the main challenge for the
property industry is to be able to present to these investors
various options, which meet their investment criteria.
He added that from year 2000 to
2006, foreign travelers grew at a compounded annual rate of 20.8
percent.
“Tourist arrival in 2006
reached 2.84 million, up by 8.4 percent versus the 2.62 million in
2005,” he noted.
Frankum said the Koreans topped
the list of foreign visitors to the country last year, overtaking
the Americans and the Japanese. According to PTAA, the number of
direct flights from Seoul to the Philippines averages 22 to 30 a
week.
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