Manila hotel eyes Cebu, Visayas market

A MARINE-themed hotel in Manila is tapping the Central Visayas market.

Lily Santos Adrid, Hotel H2O general manager, said last Tuesday that they are promoting their hotel in the region through Cebu where most of the working class population are concentrated.

“We are seeing a lot of Filipinos now traveling within the country and abroad—actually more within the country now fuelled by the very low air fare offered by the low-cost airlines,” Adrid said.

“We’d like to take advantage of this opportunity to introduce what we can offer,” she said.

Hotel H2O is the first and only marine-themed integrated resort hotel in the Philippines within the Manila Ocean Park in Luneta, Manila.

The hotel opened two years ago with 147 rooms under the China Oceanis Philippines, Inc. which is also the holding company of Manila Ocean Park and Le Monet Hotel in Baguio City.

UNIQUE OFFERING

“We believe that we are offering something very unique to the Filipino and foreign market. Aside from the leisure travelers who would want to stay in our hotel and tour the Ocean Park, we also have function rooms for meetings and conventions that can hold up to 400 people,” she said.

Adrid said that the Cebuano market is an important market for them especially that Cebu is second to Manila in terms of economic activities.

“The economic activities in Cebu is growing, people are earning more and are traveling more for both business and leisure. We want to be among the first properties who would want to be serious with tapping the local market or the domestic travelers in the country,” Adrid said.

According to the National Economic Development Authority in Central Visayas, the employment rate in the region has improved based on figures as of October 2012 with 93.5 percent employment in the region.

NEDA assistant Regional Director Efren Carreon said this figures would validate the improvement in the region’s economic condition fueled by the outsourcing and construction boom, retail expansion and solid outsourcing sector.

With this positive development in the region, Adrid said they would like to get more families, working class and the business executives from the region especially Cebu to come and stay at their hotel.

According to Adrid, the hotel has been running on 75 percent occupancy rate with half of their guests coming from the domestic travelers market.

“That alone will show us the potential of the market and for us we think that we need to promote our product, the packages to the rest of the country including the Visayas and Mindanao area,” said Adrid./Reporter Aileen Garcia-Yap