DoubleDragon Properties, co-owned by tycoon Edgar Sia II and longstanding business partner billionaire Tony Tan Caktiong, intends to extend its hotel network across Japan and Southeast Asia in the next years, banking on a post-pandemic rebound in the tourist sector.
DoubleDragon’s Singapore-incorporated subsidiary Hotel 101 Worldwide will drive the growth, with the company expecting to purchase its first hotel in Asia by the second quarter of 2022, according to a regulatory filing earlier this week.
“The development and completion of these new Hotel 101 projects will be perfectly timed with the full recovery and anticipated rebound in the tourism industry,” Hannah Yulo-Luccini, chief investment officer of DoubleDragon, said in the statement. “We believe in a couple of years, all this pent-up demand for tourism will cause an unseen surge in demand for hotel rooms across the globe.”
According to the United Nations World Tourism Organization, the tourism industry was among the most impacted by the worldwide epidemic, losing more than $900 billion in income in 2020 alone. Hotels and resorts were vacated as governments throughout the world shut their borders and imposed lockdowns to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, as per reports from Forbes.
Some green shoots for hotel businesses have begun to appear as travel restrictions are gradually lifted and governments ramp up immunization efforts. Hotel 101 reported an average occupancy rate of 96 percent at its Manila locations, which acted as quarantine facilities for Filipinos returning from overseas.
DoubleDragon is already constructing five new hotels in the Philippines, which will produce over 18 billion pesos ($351 million) in income when finished in 2024. The developments in Bohol, Boracay, Cebu, Manila, and Palawan will increase the company’s hotel portfolio to over 6,000 rooms, making it one of the country’s major hotel operators.
Reports from Forbes Asia state that DoubleDragon plans to build a presence outside of the Philippines, in major island resorts such as Bali, Indonesia, and Phuket, Thailand, as well as Hokkaido, Japan, and Saigon, Vietnam, in the coming years. In addition, the firm intends to open hotels in China, India, Europe, the United States, and the United Arab Emirates as part of its next phase of growth, which would increase its worldwide portfolio to over 50,000 rooms by 2030.
Meet Double Dragon Properties Corp. at the 8th Philippine Property and Investment Exhibition (PPIE) on 5-6 November 2022 at Crowne Plaza Hotel in Sheikh Zayed Dubai. Ayala Land is a silver sponsor of PPIE, the biggest, longest-running and most trusted Philippine business and investment forum in the Middle East, now on its eighth edition.
The past seven PPIE editions made history in the UAE and the Gulf region by bringing in over 24,500 quality visitors.
