SM changes brand

THE SM Investment Corp. (SMIC) has decided to change the company that will operate its hotel at the North Reclamation Area in Cebu City.

Merril Yu, senior vice president of the Hotel Investment Group, said SMIC signed a contract last Sept. 2 with Radisson Hotels and Resorts, a member of the US-based Carlson Hotels Worldwide.

This would be the second time SMIC has changed its mind on the operator of its Cebu City hotel.

In September last year, SMIC announced that it signed a contract with Accor to operate its 400-room hotel, which sits next to SM City Cebu. The hotel was supposed to be operated by Accor under the Sofitel brand.

Before Accor, SMIC had picked Sheraton to operate the same property.

Synergize

But SMIC has decided to “synergize” all its development since the hotel at the SM Mall of Asia (MOA) will also be operated by Radisson’s Asia Pacific office, which is based in Singapore, Yu said in a news conference in Cebu City yesterday.

“It was a seamless transition,” he said, adding that only the choice of a managing company has changed and every other detail in the Cebu City hotel development remains the same.

He said Accor and SMIC both agreed to cancel the contract they had earlier signed.

“Radisson and Sofitel are also the same (hotel) category,” he added.

Carlson—whose headquarters is in Minneapolis, Minnesota—run four other major hotel brands aside from Radisson. These are Regent, Park Plaza, Country Inns and Suites and Park Inn that are found in more than 950 locations in 71 countries worldwide.

The project budget, Yu said, remains to be at P2.7 billion, which already covers the increase in the prices of construction materials.

The 20-story Radisson Hotel Cebu is expected to become operational in March 2009. It will be the first Radisson hotel to operate in the country.

Underway

The Radisson hotel within SM MOA Complex is slated to open a year later.

Offsite fit-out works are now underway and installation of fabricated materials for the Cebu hotel will start in the next two to three weeks. The hotel will have a total floor area of 59,750 square meters.

Yu said Wimberly Allison Tong and Goo (WATG) is still the Cebu hotel’s designer. Cebu-made furnitures are also being considered to furnish the five-star facility.

Yu also confirmed that SMIC and Radisson have already identified the hotel’s senior management team. The future hotel is expected to generate 500 jobs.

Hotel rates, however, have yet to be finalized, Yu said.

Aside from the Radisson hotel, SMIC is also looking at opening “SM Inns” in Cebu as part of its expansion efforts.

SM Inns is an internal term used by the company to refer to “scaled-down” business and leisure hotels that SMIC is planning to put up.

At present, 14 areas have been identified as potential sites for SM Inns in different parts of the country. Potential sites are usually near existing SM malls.

“As much as possible, the hotel group would want to have an organized development throughout the country,” Yu said.

He said expansion efforts of the SMIC Hotel Investment Group are in line with SM founder Henry Sy’s belief that tourism sector in the country will continue to be a major economic growth factor. (DME)

source: sunstarnews, Tuesday, September 09, 2008