Red Planet Hotels, the franchisee of Tune Hotels in Southeast Asia, has announced a major expansion plan the brand across Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand. The company expects to add 18 new budget hotels to its Asian portfolio over the next two years, totalling more than 3,000 rooms.
The company will have six Tune Hotels open by March next year; the first will launch in the southern Thai city of Hat Yai in December 2011, followed by expansion into Angeles and Cebu in the Philippines, and the Thai resort town of Pattaya in February 2012. Further properties will be added in Manila and Jakarta in March 2012.
Following this, new Tune Hotels will be rolled-out in the Indonesian cities of Pekanbaru, Makassar, Surabaya and Palembang, Thailand’s key hubs of Bangkok and Phuket, and Manila and Cagayan de Oro in the Philippines by the end of next year. Two further properties, in Davao and Jakarta, will be added in Q1 2013, and a new hotel in the Indonesia city of Solo will launch in July 2013.
Red Planet’s Chief Executive Officer, Tim Hansing, commented; “We have delivered on our aggressive growth targets and our track record now speaks for itself. Taking Red Planet Hotels from 1,000 rooms 12 months ago to 3,000 today is a remarkable achievement and is testament to the quality of our people and our ability to hit planned and strategic expansion projections.
“In December we will open our first Tune Hotel in Thailand, after which we will open an average of one hotel every month. Once this opening schedule is underway we will look to raise additional funds to allow our pace of strategic growth to increase so we can open a hotel every two weeks,” he added.
The company also said it is planning to expand the Tune brand into China.
Red Planet’s current projects are worth US$120 million, and the company said it hopes to raise another US$100 million in equity by the first quarter of 2012.