Ayala leisure unit spending P15 B for 9 new Seda hotels

By Catherine Talavera (The Philippine Star) Updated February 16, 2017 – 12:00am http://www.philstar.com/business/2017/02/16/1672580/ayala-leisure-unit-spending-p15-b-9-new-seda-hotels MANILA, Philippines – The hotel and resorts arm of Ayala Land Inc. is spending P15 billion over the next two years for the development of nine hotels under its Seda brand. In a media briefing yesterday, Seda group director for sales and marketing Melissa Carlos said the nine hotels, when completed, would add around 2,464 hotel rooms to its current portfolio. This would boost the group’s room inventory to 3,281 by 2019. At present, Seda has five operating hotels with about 817 key rooms. These hotels are located in Bonifacio Global City, Cagayan de Oro, Abreeza in Davao City, Nuvali in Laguna, and Atria in Iloilo City. “Across all our properties, our guest satisfaction scores ranged from 83 to 86 percent, which is way above the industry average,” Carlos said. For this year, Seda will open three hotels with a total of 745 rooms. These include Seda Vertis North in Quezon City with 438 rooms in April, Seda Capitol Central in Bacolod City with 154 rooms in July, and Seda Lio, the brand’s first resort in El Nido Palawan, with 153 rooms. By the end of 2017, the hotel brand will be operating eight hotels with 1,562 rooms. In addition, Seda will open two new hotels in 2018 – the 255-room Seda Circuit Makati and the 342-room Seda BGC Tower 2 in Taguig City. Carlos said the development of the second Seda Tower in BGC was driven by sustained demand in the area. “BGC’s business travelers appreciate the highly vibrant BGC location and its easy access to dining and entertainment options – a quality shared by all Seda hotels owing to the location of every property in an Ayala Land mixed-use developments,” Seda said. Carlos said the development of the BGC hotel would require an investment of P2.1 billion. Seda BGC Tower 2 will offer 342 hotel rooms and 48 serviced apartments to cater to long-stay guests many of whom are project consultants and remain in the country from three to six months. The two other hotels to be opened in 2018 will bring the brand’s hotel room inventory to 2,159 rooms by the end of 2018. By 2019, Seda will open four new hotels with a total of 1,122 hotel rooms. Of these hotels are the 293-room Seda Suites in Makati, the 350-room Seda Bay Area in Parañaque, the 214-room Seda Central Bloc in Cebu, and the 265-room Seda Arca South in Taguig. Carlos said Seda’s expansion is in line with parent firm Ayala Land Inc.’s vision of having a total of 6,000 hotel rooms by 2020. These rooms include the branded hotels and the resorts, he added. “As for the branded hotels, the only one in the pipeline so far is Mandarin,” Carlos said. Also part of ALI’s hotel and resorts brands is the El Nido Resorts. Among the resorts offered by the El Nido brand are the Miniloc, Lagen and Pangalusian in El Nido, and Apulit Island in Taytay. The group also has the Raffles Hotel in Makati City.