Face-to-Face: Norbert Vas
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Travel Daily talks to Norbert Vas, vice president of sales & marketing for Indonesian hotel giant Archipelago International, about the company’s rapid expansion…
Q) You recently reached the milestone of 100 Aston hotels. What is your future pipeline for this brand, and how big do you think it can get?
We have a total pipeline of more than 100 additional hotels. These are projects that are really happening and for which we are already providing regular technical services. Around 70 of these are either four-star Aston Hotels or two-star favehotels, but our niche brands – Harper, Alana, Hotel NEO and Quest – are also growing. Under Royal Kamuela, our most upmarket brand, we have an exciting beach front project in Lombok which was recently nominated for the Asia Pacific Property Awards.
Q) favehotel is another brand that’s expanding rapidly, but you only have one outside Indonesia. When will we see fave launched in more Asian countries, and where do you expect this to be?
Actually fave is already making first baby steps outside of Indonesia. We already operate a very successful favehotel in Langkawi on Cenang Beach and through our joint venture in the Philippines will soon launch a few projects there. Hotel NEO will open in Penang, Malaysia by latest March next year.
Q) Including yourselves, a lot of hotel companies are opening a lot of hotels in Indonesia. Is the demand strong enough to match this supply surge?
A lot of European and American operators finally took notice of Indonesia but most of them are to late, do not have the necessary local support infrastructure and end up signing projects that the established operators have rejected.
I fear we will soon go through some belt tightening in markets such as Bali, Makassar and Surabaya but over long term things will balance out. With our 17 years experience in Indonesia, our head office location in Jakarta and Bali and our seven well established brands, out of which four are on the midscale and budget segments, we are right where we need to be, have unmatched resources in the country and are in the pole position.
Q) Which markets in Indonesia do you believe have the strongest growth potential, and where do you foresee over-supply issues occurring?
Jabodetabek, which is the greater metropolitan area of Jakarta, has a population of more than 35 million people and a medium household income exceeding the rest of the country. We already have 15 projects in this area but there are still opportunities here.
But there are other markets that are becoming very difficult, we are already advising developers to take a wait-and-see approach in Bali, Surabaya, Makassar, and the central Javanese cities of, Yogyakarta, Solo and Semarang.
Q) Archipelago has a strong portfolio of brands now. Which are you most excited about?
I personally love favehotels and Hotel NEO, which is our designer budget brand, the most. Throughout my career I spent valuable years with high end chains like Four Seasons, Mandarin Oriental, Shangri-La and InterContinental but there is something about this no nonsense, good value and honest approach of budget hotels that fascinates me.
Q) And can we expect to see any more new Archipelago brands in future?
Yes, we have a new brand and signed a few very sexy projects for it already but we still keep a lid on it and will not officially announce it until we have reached critical mass.
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