HAROLDS TO EXPAND IN MANILA
GPH Properties Inc. is allotting some P500 million this year to build the hotel in Quezon City which will have 148 rooms. The firm also eyes to erect two more branches in Cebu probably in Cebu Business Park and Lapu-Lapu City in Mactan.
Homegrown accomodation facility, Harolds Hotel, is earmarking roughly half a billion pesos this year to fund its expansion plan in Metro Manila.
In an interview yesterday, Harolds Hotel general manager Ed Tongco said the 14-storey project will be located inside a 1,500-square meter property in Quezon City and will have a to- tal of 148 rooms.
Construction of the project will start in the fourth quarter of this year and scheduled for completion in 2019.
“Quezon City is getting to be a destination. In the couple of years, it will be like Makati. There are so many new players there,” said Tongco.
Harolds Hotel is owned by GPH Properties Inc. and has been operating as a business hotel since 2011. The 12-storey facility consists of 90 rooms located along Gorordo Avenue in Cebu City.
Tongco also revealed the possibility of GPH Properties to open two more hotels in Cebu. The first being in Cebu Business Park and the other in LapuLapu City.
However, these are still subject to further considerations as this will depend on the success of Harolds Hotel in Quezon City.
But prospects for the Mactan hotel is high with the anticipated rise in tourists following the completion of the Terminal 2 of the Mactan Cebu International Airport in June 2018, said Tongco.
Recently, the business hotel has earned an 8.7 rating, under the “very good” category in travel booking site, Booking.com.
Tongco said the high rating has earned them more bookings from both domestic and international travelers.
The hotel, according to Tongco, has also been named by the government as one of the recommended accommodations for the upcoming Association of Southeast Asian Nations ( ASEAN) meetings in Cebu next month.
While Harold’s Hotel was a recommended accommodation for Asean delegates, it so happened that the hotel is performing at more than 90 percent occupancy rate now and could no longer accommodate Asean guests, according to the hotel manager.
The hotel is also an attractive site for corporate events, with 40 percent of its market being corporate accounts, 30 percent come from online reservations, and 30 percent from mixed market including travel agents and individual tourists.