Centara Hotels & Resorts has signed a management contract with Oversee Construction Co Ltd for a new Bangkok property to be called the Centara Watergate Pavillion Hotel.
Located in the popular business and tourist district of Pratunam, the premium four-star hotel will have 288 rooms as well as two restaurants and bars, the Spa Cenvaree, function rooms, extensive meeting facilities and a business centre. The hotel is currently under construction and is scheduled to open in the second quarter of 2012.
The site will also house a large wholesale and retail complex intended to further lift the wholesale and retail business, investment and competitiveness of Pratunam.
The complex will have 60,000 square metres of space with more that 1,000 retail units. The complex is expected to benefit from convenient access to the BTS station via a skywalk and the Airport Link to Suvarnabhumi Airport.
Oversee Construction has invested 5.5 billion baht to develop both the hotel and trade complex.
In a related development, foreign investors have announced plans to form a partnership with Centara to build two hotels in Mauritius.
Indian Ocean Real Estate Co will invest 1.5 billion rupees (1.68 billion baht) in the Centara properties to help attract Asian tourists, said Murray Adair, the company’s CEO.
Indian Ocean Real Estate is a joint venture between Actis LLP, a London- based private equity company, and Groupe Mon Loisir, a Mauritian investment holding company.
The 98-room Centara Poste La Fayette, one of the planned hotels, would prob ably open toward the end of 2012, he said.
”Centara is firmly at centre stage in tapping the highly lucrative Asian market that many hotel operators desire to reach,” Mr Adair told Bloomberg News.
Tourist arrivals to Mauritius from Asia rose 29% in the first quarter, led by India and China, against just 2.3% from Europe, the island’s biggest visitor market.
Source: http://www.bangkokpost.com/business/economics/241503/centara-expanding-at-home-and-abroad
