Accor to triple stable of hotels by 2015

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Accor, which owns and operates Pullman hotels, continues to open hotels across the spectrum to meet the needs of the different market segments visiting Malaysia.

Gerard Guillouet

KUCHING: Accor has announced plans to expand its hotel network in Malaysia with an additional 15 properties comprising 2,600 rooms throughout the country over the next two years.

This will amount to tripling its current stable of hotels to 20 hotels across all segments.

Gerard Guillouet, senior vice president for Accor Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore has highlighted the move as strategic and said, “Accor sees Malaysia as one of the top tourism destinations in Southeast Asia. The country is full of potential and has plenty of room for Accor to grow.

“We are focusing our energy to aggressively develop more hotels in the country across all market segments and with strong support from our hotel owners, tourism authorities as well as local communities, we are excited about the future prospects for our hotels in Malaysia.”

The move was also opportune for the company as it was “just in time for Visit Malaysia Year 2014” and Guillouet further elaborated that, “We expect to open at least four hotels in both peninsular and East Malaysia this year including Novotel Melaka, Mercure Kota Kinabalu Eton, Ibis Styles Ipoh and Ibis Styles Sandakan Waterfront.”

The momentum of new hotel openings would lead the group to achieve its target of 20 hotels by 2015, boosting job opportunities and economic benefits for the communities surrounding the hotel.

“It will allow us to become one of the leaders transforming the country’s hospitality industry into the future,” he added.

Accor, which owns and operates Pullman hotels, continues to open hotels across the spectrum to meet the needs of the different market segments visiting Malaysia with the mix of hotel segments in upscale (15 per cent), midscale (40 per cent) and economy (45 per cent).

“The network will also be geographically balanced with hotels in strategic business and leisure destinations throughout the country.

“Our long term strategy has been to emphasise development in central Malaysia first eventually expanding into other regions including Penang, Perak, Selangor, Melaka, Johor, Sabah, and Sarawak,” Guillouet enthused.

“Apart from promoting our own hotels, we will also promote the site where our hotels are at. We are promoting the different destinations in Malaysia inclusive of Sarawak (Kuching), Sabah (Kota Kinabalu) as well as Kuala Lumpur (Putrajaya) and we are also linked to the Tourism Malaysia website.”