Cebu firm allots P500M for hotel in Quezon City

Homegrown developer GPH Properties Inc., owner of Harolds Hotel, is primed to spend over half a billion for its expansion in Metro Manila.

Ed Tongco, Harolds Hotel general manager, told reporters on Thursday that they are set to bring the brand to Quezon City this year.

“Quezon City is getting to be a destination. In a couple of years, it will boom like Makati,” he said.

Tongco said the 14-storey hotel with 148 rooms will stand on a 1,200-square-meter property.

This will be bigger than the hotel along Gorordo Avenue, which is only 12 storeys high and has 90 rooms.

Tongco said they are expecting to break ground for the new hotel in the last quarter of this year and target completion of the project on 2019.

The developer, Tongco said, is banking on the success of the brand in Cebu in the last six years.

8.7 rating

First opened to the public in 2011, Tongco said the hotel used to be a “white elephant” but has now become a well-known accommodation facility.

Harolds Hotel recently received an 8.7 rating from users of online travel booking site Booking.com, which translates to “very good.”

For the whole 2016, Tongco said the hotel enjoyed an above–90 percent occupancy rate.

Tongco said they are still above 90 percent in the last three months and are expecting to hit 95 percent by the end of March this year.

Market

He said 40 percent of its market are corporate accounts, 30 percent are from online reservations, while the rest are from a mix market, including travel agents and individual tourists.

Pharmaceutical companies, insurance firms and small enterprises are among the corporate groups that book with the hotel, he said.

Around 80 percent of their guests are domestic while the remaining 20 percent are from the United States, Japan, Europe and Australia.

Tongco said he is optimistic that they can replicate this success once they start operations in Quezon City.

Plans

Aside from the Quezon City expansion, he said that they are also considering the possibility of opening two more Harolds Hotel in Cebu: one near the first one while the other one on Mactan Island.

He said they are anticipating the opening of the second terminal of the Cebu airport in June 2018 before they study the market here.

“With a new terminal, we expect higher foot traffic. We’ll just have to see by then,” said Tongco.