Alliance Global gears up for hotel expansion

MANILA, Philippines — Alliance Global Group Inc. (AGI) is gearing up for expansion, with plans to grow its hotel capacity to 11,000 rooms by 2028, adding six new hotels under the Megaworld Hotels & Resorts brands.

AGI CEO Kevin Tan said the company remains the biggest player in the Philippine tourism sector.

“With the surge in domestic and international tourism activities, all our hotels have been experiencing high occupancy rates and much-improved average daily room rates,” Tan said.

As a business, AGI’s tourism segment now accounts for 20 percent of the business, up from about 16 percent five years ago.

AGI currently has close to 7,500 rooms spread across 19 international and home-grown operating hotel properties located all over the country.

With the planned expansion, AGI aims to solidify its market dominance in the country’s fast-growing tourism sector being the largest hotel developer and operator in the Philippines.

Its subsidiary, Travelers International Hotel Group, now operates six international hotel brands, which include five hotels in Pasay City: Marriott Hotel (570 rooms), Hilton Hotel (352 rooms), Sheraton Hotel (350 rooms), Hotel Okura (190 rooms), and Holiday Inn Express (737 rooms), as well as Courtyard by Marriott in Iloilo City (326 rooms).

Megaworld, for its part, has 12 hotel properties across the country under the Megaworld Hotels & Resorts brands, which include the Richmonde Hotel Ortigas in Pasig City (210 rooms), Eastwood Richmonde Hotel in Quezon City (138 rooms), Richmonde Hotel in Iloilo City (149 rooms), Savoy Hotel in Pasay City (684 rooms), Savoy Hotel in Boracay, Aklan (559 rooms), Savoy Hotel Mactan Newtown in Lapu-Lapu City, Cebu (547 rooms), Belmont Hotel in Pasay City (470 rooms), Belmont Hotel in Boracay, Aklan (442 rooms), Belmont Hotel Mactan in Lapu-Lapu City, Cebu (550 rooms), Kingsford Hotel in Parañaque City (529 rooms), Twin Lakes Hotel in Laurel, Batangas near Tagaytay (122 rooms), and Hotel Lucky Chinatown in Binondo, Manila (93 rooms). Global-Estate Resorts, Inc. (GERI), which is part of the Megaworld Group, is also operating Fairways & Bluewater in Boracay, Aklan (250 rooms and villas).

The additional hotels being built to be ready by 2028 will be located in various cities and towns across the country, particularly in Parañaque City, Laguna, Bacolod City in Negros Occidental, City of San Fernando in Pampanga, Boracay Island in Malay, Aklan, and in San Vicente, Palawan.

Tan said as the Philippine economy continued to reopen alongside most economies around the globe, the tourism sector saw increased spending for staycations, travel, leisure and entertainment, and the resurgence in MICE (meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions) activities throughout the country.

In 2022, AGI’s tourism segment reached a historic high of P38.6 billion in 2022, growing by 84 percent year-on-year and even exceeding pre-pandemic 2019 levels by 10 percent.