Golden Development Pte Ltd has placed the highest bid of S$194.77 million or S$10,031 per square metre for the gross floor area of a hotel site near Amara Hotel in the Tanjong Pagar area.
The Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) said the tender for the 99-year leasehold plot at Gopeng Street/Peck Seah Street drew seven bids.
The second highest bid of S$189 million for the 2,311-square metre site, with maximum gross floor area of 19,416 square metres, came from Imperial Development. The lowest bid, from a joint venture between Fairvalue 128 Pte Ltd and Hotel Star Investments, was S$135.84 million.
URA said a decision on the award of the tender will be made after the bids have been evaluated.
Li Hiaw Ho, executive director of CBRE Research said that the bids for the hotel site, which can yield some 300 rooms, reflected positive business sentiment for the tourism and hospitality sector of the Republic.
“The bullish response to the tender of the subject site reflects continued strong demand for hotel rooms due to the increasing number of visitors to Singapore,” he said.
He said the top bid was more than double the bid of S$94 million that triggered the URA tender, and is almost 65 per cent higher than the average price paid for the two other hotel sites awarded in 2007 in the same area.
The 272-room Orchid Hotel will be completed later in the year, and the second nearby hotel was awarded to Carlton Properties in June 2007.
Some 963,000 tourists came to Singapore last November, an increase of 16 per cent compared with November 2009. From January to November 2010, Singapore Tourism Board recorded arrivals of some 10.51 million tourists and is confident that the target of 11.5 to 12.5 million tourists will be comfortably met.
Mr Li said that in the hotel sector, the average occupancy rate gained 3.9 percentage points year-on-year to 89 per cent in November 2010. Likewise, average room rates grew by 10.5 per cent year-on-year to S$220 in November 2010.
Source : Channel NewsAsia – 11 Jan 2011