The Philippine Star

AGI rides tourism boom with hotel expansion

- By RICHMOND MERCURIO

Alliance Global Group Inc. (AGI), the holding company of tycoon Andrew Tan, is bolstering its presence in the hospitalit­y sector with the continuing expansion of its hotel operations in the coming years.

“Today we are setting our sights on Philippine tourism,” AGI vice chairman and CEO Kevin Tan said during the group’s 25th listing anniversar­y ceremony on the Philippine Stock Exchange yesterday.

“Together with a strong domestic tourism sector, we see this as an opportunit­y, which is why we are expanding our hospitalit­y portfolio across the Philippine­s,” he said.

As the country’s largest hotel developer and operator, Tan said AGI has close to 8,000 room keys from its 19 internatio­nal and homegrown operating hotels all over the Philippine­s.

“By 2028, we aim to solidify our market dominance by growing our hotel portfolio to 12,000 room keys with an additional six big hotels from our Megaworld Hotels and Resorts Group,” Tan said.

“By investing and bringing more of our hotel properties to some of the major destinatio­ns in the country, we aim to help further strengthen the Philippine­s’ position as a global tourism player,” he said.

Tan said the group is currently the largest local partner of the Marriott group with more than 1,200 room keys in three locations in the Philippine­s.

It is also one of the largest partners of the Hilton group, the IHG group or Holiday Inn group and the Okura group.

Tan said AGI likewise has about 15 homegrown brands that are located in various tourism destinatio­ns all over the Philippine­s like Boracay, Tagaytay, Cebu, Iloilo, Bacolod and Palawan.

“To our investment­s and developmen­t efforts on this front, we will hope to help attract local internatio­nal tourists and provide significan­t economic impact through spending in other related sectors. In turn, this sustained economic activity provides more long term income and benefits for Filipinos including job creation,” he said.

AGI has business interests in real estate developmen­ts through property giant Megaworld Corp., spirits manufactur­ing through Emperador Inc., quick service restaurant­s through Golden Arches Developmen­t Corp., infrastruc­ture developmen­t through Alliance Global-Infracorp Developmen­t Inc., and hospitalit­y through Travellers Internatio­nal Hotel Group Inc.

According to Tan, AGI has experience­d tremendous growth in profitabil­ity as an active partner of the country for national developmen­t since the first day of its listing in the PSE in April 1999.

“This growth is best illustrate­d in the exponentia­l increase in revenues from P44.5 billion in 2010 to a record level of more than P211 billion last year or a 375 percent jump from the past decade,” Tan said.

“Likewise, we have grown our net income by 219 percent to P30.3 billion in 2023 from just P9.5 billion in 2010.

This growth is a product of all the hard work and efforts of all the men and women at the Alliance Global Group and its various subsidiari­es,” he said.

Tan said Megaworld currently has over 31 townships all over the Philippine­s.

Travellers Internatio­nal continues to be the largest integrated resort in terms of footprint and has accumulate­d over 3,500 hotel rooms throughout the years.

Emperador over the last 10 years has gone through a robust global expansion and has conquered new markets such as Spain, Mexico and the UK.

Golden Arches or McDonald’s Philippine­s, meanwhile, has built more than 700 stores nationwide.

Outside China and Japan, Tan said the Philippine­s has the most number of McDonald’s stores in all of Asia.

“It has been our honor to fulfill our role as agents of economic progress through the various nation building efforts that we spearhead as a group,” Tan said.

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