Ayala Land now building 10 hotels

Property giant Ayala Land, Inc. (ALI), through subsidiary Ayala Land Hotels and Resorts Corporation, continues to bet heavily on the prospects of the Philippine tourism industry and now has 10 hotels under construction.

In an interview, Ayala Hotels chief operating office Al Legaspi said “nine of them are Seda and we are also doing the Mandarin. And we also have different platforms of Seda, we have resorts, service apartments, and we have a regular Seda hotel.”

Ayala’s resort operation is mainly in El Nido although it is looking at other opportunities as well. It also has a serviced apartments under the Seda brand in Makati and in Cebu while a third one is being built in Bonifacio Global City.

He added that these 10 hotels will be opened on a staggered basis starting next year until 2018.

Legaspi said they now have 2,000 rooms nationwide, mainly under the organic Seda brand. Under construction is close to another 2,000 rooms, as the firm expects to have 6,000 rooms in operation in five years.

“At this point we are doing it all ourselves. The only partner we're collaborating at this time is the Mandarin for the hotel in Makati,” said Legaspi.

Ayala Land will be redeveloping the current site of the Intercontinental Hotel in Makati into a mixed-use project with an intermodal transport system. “We are in talks with them (Intercontinental) now on other opportunities,” said Legaspi.

Ayala Hotels is planning to invest up to 30 billion over the next five years to put up a strong of Seda hotels across the country while looking at opportunities to expand the Seda brand overseas.