Land & Houses’ hotel arm, L&H Hotel Management, will open two luxury hotels by 2018 with one being located in Bangkok and the other Pattaya, the Bangkok Post reported. Each property will cost THB2 billion to build and will operate under its Grande Centre Point brand.
Suwanna Buddhaprasart, director of L&H Hotel Management, told the newspaper that Thailand’s robust tourism industry continues to provide a lot of opportunities in this market. The positive outlook is due in large part to the fact that the country saw a sharp rise in foreign arrivals last year despite the global slowdown. Almost 30 million tourists visited Thailand in 2015.
The new property in Bangkok will be located on Soi Thong Lor and is scheduled to open before the end of the year while the hotel in North Pattaya is set to begin operations in 2018, according to the Bangkok Post. The Grande Centre Point hotels will have 350-450 rooms and will target mid-market and upscale tourists. The company believes the break-even period will be somewhere around 10 to 12 years and is expecting occupancy rates to start at 75 percent in the first year of operations before climbing to 80 percent during the next few years.
At the moment, the developer already has three hotels in Bangkok found at the Terminal 21 shopping centre, Ratchadamri and Phloenchit. However, L&H Hotel Management is looking to add more hotels in Bangkok with their prefered location being downtown and other commercial areas in the city. The company forecasts hotel revenue will grow ten percent to THB1.65 billion in 2016 and revenue per available room is estimated to increase by ten percent as well.
“We’ll see a surge in occupancy and revenue for Bangkok hotels in 2016. We believe the number of tourists, especially from China, Japan, India and South Korea, will grow considerably. This will help compensate for the loss of euro-zone tourists, which may continue to decline this year,” Suwanna noted.
Image: The Grande Centre Point Ratchadamri
