InterContinental Penang to have luxury residences
Posted on | April 24, 2007 | No Comments
By BUSINESS TIMES
THE InterContinental Resort Penang, owned by Tradewinds Corp Bhd, may not open for at least another 15 months, as the hotel has decided to incorporate luxury residences.
The 438-room Mutiara Beach Resort Penang, to be rebranded as InterContinental, will see its inventory reduced to 220 rooms and 80 units of residences. The latter will be sold and leased back by the owners.
Following Tradewinds’ decision to build luxury residences, the renovation and refurbishment exercise is expected to be more than the initial estimate of RM60 million.
Villa living in the resort, in the likes of Four Seasons Residences and at The Westin, Langkawi is becoming popular. Both hotels have decided to develop villas on the additional land and sell them.
From a hotel investors’ viewpoint, the real estate play can partially pay for a hotel or resort, in addition to having bigger inventories to manage.
The hotel, located in Teluk Bahang, closed its doors for renovation on March 27 2006 and had planned to reopen 18 months later.
The closure was to enable a full-scale exercise to refurbish and modernise its premises.
“We viewed the market situation in Penang and wanted a product that is suitable and one that fits into Penang Tourism’s agenda on where to target the product,” director of project and technical services Tey Kok Kheong said.
“The hotel now sits on 2.23ha. We are converting one wing into residences and maintaining the rooms in the other wing,” Tey told Business Times.
“The 80 units of residences will be sold and leased back and both hotel and the residences will be managed by InterContinental,” he added.
The 80 units will comprise one-bedroom unit (measuring 100 sq m), two-bedroom unit (150 sq m) and three-bedroom units (200 sq m).
“We hope for the hotel to be ready by the second quarter of 2008,” he said.
This 18-year old hotel is currently valued at RM217.5 million.
Tradewinds has a total of ten hotels here including the Crowne Plaza Mutiara Kuala Lumpur, Hotel Istana, Hilton Petaling Jaya and Mutiara Johor Bahru.
For the year ended December 31 2006, Tradewinds posted RM1.61 billion in revenue, up from RM1.45 billion in 2005.
Net losses narrowed to RM9.81 million from RM48.49 million in the corresponding period of 2005.
Tradewinds in its announcement to Bursa Malaysia said that the contribution from the hotel division is expected to be maintained despite the temporary closure for refurbishment on Mutiara Beach Resort Penang.
Tradewinds also has a hotel in Hanoi, Vietnam.
Share
Comments
Leave a Reply
