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SEEING
the potential of its meetings and banquet trade this
year due to the growing demand of corporate guests for
additional business utilities within its premise, The
Richmonde Hotel is mulling over the expansion of its
facilities by converting a portion of its topmost floor
into four functions rooms, the hotel’s top executive
recently disclosed.
“Mindful
of the increasing needs of our corporate guests for
ample business centers where they can meet or confer
with their colleagues and or clients, we are planning to
add more function rooms in the middle part of this
year,” Joy de Mesa, Richmonde’s director of sales and
marketing, told BusinessMirror.
“This,
we deem, will help us improve more of our meetings and
banquet services.”
While
putting up additional function rooms to bring the
Hotel’s seven operating business facilities—the biggest
of which can accommodate 150 persons—to 11, de Mesa
reiterated that it would not create disruptions to the
guests billeted in the adjacent presidential suites and
other rooms located on the same floor, at the same time
retaining the number of rooms of the accommodation
property.
“Converting a portion of the 23rd floor of our Hotel is
a whole thing without having to disrupt the operations
of the other rooms and, at the same time, deducting the
number of saleable rooms especially the presidential
suites,” said De Mesa.
“If done
as scheduled, we expect the entire floor to service all
the banquet needs of our corporate guests, which in turn
would draw more corporate clients to us.”
Richmonde suite
Sustained high occupancy
THE
Richmonde Hotel has leveled evenly compared to the
average occupancy rate of all Ortigas hotel facilities
in 2006—it ended last year with 80-percent tenancy rate,
or 8 percent higher than the recorded 72 percent in
2005.
“The
increase in our year-on-year occupancy rate means that
our business is doing very good,” De Mesa stressed,
while noting the hotel’s achievement of surpassing its
targeted 74 percent for the year 2006.
On a
monthly basis, Richmonde also posted a 2-percent growth
in occupancy to 82 percent last January from 80 percent
in the same period last year.
De Mesa
attributed the Hotel’s year-on-year and monthly
occupancy growth to the concerted efforts of all the
executives and employees, as well as to the combined
initiatives of the private sector and the government’s
tourism department for aggressively promoting the
country as a haven of wide array tourist attractions to
the right markets abroad.
On
average, 80 percent of the occupancy bookings in The
Richmonde come from the business market including
corporate, long-staying (businessmen who stay at minimum
of two weeks to one year), ad hoc (those who stay at the
hotel to attend to conventions outside) and banquet
guests.
The
remaining 20 percent, on the other hand, is shared by
leisure and tourist markets including families, tour
groups, and medical tourists.
Looking
forward to the hotel’s business for the entire 2007, de
Mesa said, “We are projecting to maintain our occupancy
of 80 percent on a conservative approximation.”
In so
doing, the hotel’s sales and marketing executive said
they are inclined to implement pricing strategy this
year; put in place the revenue management program; and
continue tapping new markets especially the medical
tourists who have recently seen the potential of the
thriving local medical tourism industry. |
