Relaunch of Apo View to boost tourism, say
THE relaunching of Apo View Hotel is a big help to the increasing demand of guest and meeting rooms in Davao City, said a Tourism official.
Tourism Davao Regional director Roberto Alabado III said Davao City has an estimated 10,000 rooms including those of hotels, motels, lodging houses, and inns among others as reported to them by the City Tourism Operations Office. However on a daily basis, these hotel rooms have an average occupancy rate of 60 percent which leaves only about 1,200 rooms available for Meetings, Incentives, Conferences, and Exhibitions (Mice)- related affairs.
“But these 1,200 rooms are very small. If you’re going to talk of a national convention, they have at least 3,000 people so it means that we can’t have them all at the same time but almost every day we have meetings here coming from all over Mindanao…So the total rooms we really have that we can say are for tourists are around 3,000 to 4,000 only in Davao City,” Alabado said during the press conference on the official relaunching of the Apo View Hotel yesterday, October 19.
He said the Davao City Investment and Promotions Center also had separate talks with hotel investors interested in expanding here in Davao City.
“The more hotels that we have here in Davao, the more rooms, then the people will realize that we have higher room capacity then they won’t hesitate to come here. They are just looking for room capacity so that they can host their guests. They will not come here, they will not bring large groups if we lack rooms. But if they are assured that we have rooms for their guests, then they will go,” Alabado said.
“Thank you Apo View Hotel for coming in and trying to expand so that we can have more rooms. It will make us more attractive to more tourists,” he added.
The expansion of Apo
View Hotel under a new management entails refurbishing and construction of additional rooms. According to Apo View Hotel managing director Edmundo Las when they took over the management of the hotel a few years back, it has about 120 rooms. To date, the hotel has about 185 rooms and they plan to reach their 200room target by the early part of 2018. Aside from that, they also target to upgrade their amenities and facilities together with the construction of three building towers on the background of Apo View Hotel to be used as residential and business center units.
“We are in support of Davao. We have to build more hotel rooms for the tourists to have… The Apo View will sustain existing markets. We categorized the three markets that we have – the locals of Mindanao, the national which comprises of those from Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao, and of course the foreign clients,” Las said. JPA