TWO more Starwood brands – The Luxury Collection and Tribute Portfolio – will make their debut in Singapore this year and next, taking the number of Starwood properties in Singapore to eight.
The luxury Duxton Club will consist of two pre-war colonial heritage buildings offering guests different experiences. The 50-room Duxton House is slated to open in early 2017 while the 138-room Duxton Terrace, 200 metres away on Murray Street, will open its doors in July next year.
Meanwhile, the 41-room Hotel Vagabond, located on Syed Alwi Road, will be up and running by October this year as it is being rebranded from an existing property to the Tribute Portfolio brand.
Starwood launched the Tribute Portfolio brand, which sits in the upper upscale space, in April last year. It has since expanded to over 20 Tribute Portfolio hotels worldwide. The hotel management group aims to grow this to 100 properties within a five-year period.
Duxton Club will be managed by Starwood under the Luxury Collection brand for owner Satinder Garcha. Meanwhile, Hotel Vagabond will continue to be operated by Garcha Hotels but will be franchised under the Tribute Portfolio brand. International designers Anouska Hempel and Jacques Garcia have been roped in to work on the hotels.
Mr Garcha, chief executive of Garcha Hotels, said: “This partnership with Starwood will leverage our mutual strengths to re-create the charms of a bygone era; the adaptive reuse of such historic buildings. . . will offer guests an unforgettable boutique hotel experience, while contributing to urban sustainability and preservation of our vibrant past.”
The two boutique hotels are undergoing “multi-million dollar renovations”, Starwood Hotels & Resorts said in a media release.
Rajit Sukumaran, senior vice-president, acquisitions & development, Asia Pacific at Starwood Hotels & Resorts, said Starwood is confident the two distinct brands will make their mark in Singapore’s “highly competitive hospitality market”.
This comes as hotel room supply in Singapore is expected to grow significantly between 2016 and 2018, from 60,908 rooms as at end 2015 to 67,645 room by end 2018. This has put downward pressure on room rates and revenue per available room (RevPAR).
Preliminary data from the Singapore Tourism Board showed that industry-wide RevPAR declined 2.5 per cent year on year to S$197 in the first six months of the year. This came on the back of a 3 per cent fall in the average room rate to about S$235, even as the average occupancy inched up 0.4 percentage point to 83.7 per cent.
While Mr Sukumaran acknowledged that there has been a fair bit of supply injected this year, he pointed out that Duxton House and Hotel Vagabond are existing properties; only Duxton Terrace introduces more room inventory into the market.
“We’re very bullish about Singapore,” he said. “We don’t see a prolonged decline in RevPAR.”
“So far, we are performing at or above the market. We think we’re doing a good job as far as (getting) the right type of guests into our hotels,” he went on to say. He added that its various brands are positioned to cater to different travel personas.
Other Singapore-based hotels operated by Starwood – which was recently acquired by Marriott to create the world’s biggest hotel company – include The St Regis Singapore, W Singapore-Sentosa Cove, The Westin Singapore, Le Meridien Singapore, Sentosa, Sheraton Towers Singapore, and Four Points by Sheraton Singapore, Riverview.
Mr Sukumaran said the group is also in talks about its other brands which have yet to enter the Singapore market, namely, Aloft Hotels and Element Hotels.