Marco Polo Davao expands, keeps up with city’s growth

To sustain the hotel accommodation demand of the growing Davao metropolis, Marco Polo Davao had spent a considerable sum of investment as a major player in its promising business district.

“Davao is now the next big city after Cebu and it is growing positively. Since we are the leading hotel operators in the area, we feel the movement so our owners are promising to put more investments so that the hotel will continue to grow with the city,” said the general manager of Marco Polo Davao Stanley Lau in an exclusive interview with The Freeman.

Lau discussed that as a market, Davao has a huge potential because it has already been attracting a bulk of business-oriented client-base such as chief executives from foreign and local companies who usually has the money to spend and frequently keeps coming back.

“The hotel industry in Davao is very positive because the city is very strong in terms of infrastructure since the local government is putting emphasis on improving their drainage, putting additional traffic lights and well-asphalted highways to attract potential investors,” added Lau.

As a matter of fact, Davao City is considered as the 5th in Asia in terms of human resources as they have large pool of manpower in different field such as tourism and hotel industry, said Lau.

“Davaoeños are accommodating people and they have a good potential to tap the hospitality industry and because of their inherent trait cruise ships and hotels from Macau are getting most of their manpower,” Lau revealed.

Known as the country’s fruit basket, Davao is also the haven of banana, pineapple and other fruit plantations such as American company DOLE. It also has an emerging medical industry and tourism industry as it is presently enjoying a great number of Japanese, Koreans, Americans and European clients and influx of domestic travelers as well.

Lau said that more investors are also recently eyeing great interest for Davao especially from the retail sector such as mall giant Ayala which is deemed to put up a new branch in the area soon after recently purchasing a lot as well as SM which was reported to expand their existing mall to cater to a growing client base.

 And noticing how the market in Davao has become demanding after their 10 years of operation in the area, Marco Polo Davao decided to put up new facilities and amenities to address these needs such as their “The Deck” which has a new restaurant along their pool side, function room and lounge and their soon-to-be launched “Lapis Lazuli” spa. Lau revealed that roughly P50 million has been spent for these partial developments.

At the moment, Marco Polo Davao is considered as the landmark of the city with 18 storeys containing 245 rooms.  And optimistic with Davao’s fast-paced growth, Lau said that they will be undergoing more expansion plans in the future such as addition of more rooms and function areas to sustain the good occupancy rate they have been receiving daily.

 “As hoteliers, we are the indicators of a city’s growth so we feel Davao’s pulse and we say its growing fast, the momentum is building up already and with these, we see good things ahead,” Lau pointed out.