Far East Hospitality is planning a significant move outside its Singapore home, with a major expansion into the Asia Pacific region.
At a media lunch in Singapore yesterday, the company’s CEO Arthur Kiong said Far East is expecting to double its portfolio over the next few years, with ASEAN countries and Australia forming the main focus areas of the expansion. Far East currently operates nine hotels and nine serviced residences in Singapore, plus one long-stay property in Kuala Lumpur. But the company now plans to expand its three upscale brands – Village, Oasia and Quincy – into new markets across Asia.
According to Kiong, these markets will form a mix of emerging Asian nations such as Myanmar and Vietnam, and more established markets like Australia.
“We need to get the right balance between high-growth, high-risk markets like Myanmar, and low-risk markets like Australia,” Kiong said, although he added that any move into the Australian hotel sector would need to be a “bold expansion”. Other markets identified by Far East include Thailand, and Phuket in particular, as well as key cities and resort areas in Indonesia, and the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur.
Growth is not expected to happen overnight, however. Kiong stated the need for Far East to expand steadily. “We don’t want to over-commit,” he said. “We’re looking to expand gradually over the next few years.”
Kiong also said he believed that all three of Far East’s brands had potential to work alongside each other in international markets. While Village, Oasia and Quincy occupy a similar brand tier, the CEO said the mid- to upscale segment was a “very diverse market in terms of demography and geography”, and that the different hotels could complement each other.
Village was labelled by Kiong as Far East’s “catch-all” brand, located in village-style urban enclaves, while Oasia is more directed to the corporate travel segment, typically located in business parks. Quincy is positioned more towards the upscale end of the market, and operates as an all-inclusive boutique-style product.
