Raffles To Expand - Raffles Holdings Ltd - Brief Article - Company Profile

Business Asia, July, 2001

RAFFLES HOLDINGS, OWNER of the 114 year-old colonial-style Raffles Hotel in Singapore, plans to double the rooms it manages and owns to 25,000 by 2005 as part of a new blueprint to become one of the world's top luxury hotel brands.

Singapore's largest luxury hotel operator, which recently bought the hotel unit of Switzerland's SAirGroup for S$439 million ($466.53 million), will be looking to add hotels in South America and the Middle East, its chief executive Richard Helfer said.

The holdings group also wants to own or manage hotels in Paris, Rome, Tokyo, Hong Kong and San Francisco, and may develop rive to six hotels a year on its own or with partners.

"This (new) number is to get distribution and brand reach, though the next phase of growth won't be measured by size alone," Helfer said. Developing other elements of the holding group's business, such as food, beverages and spas, is also on the cards.

Raffles, about 60 per cent owned by South East Asia's largest traded developer CapitaLand Ltd, now manages more than 13,000 rooms and has about S$100 million in cash to fund acquisitions.

The company has recently renamed its Singapore Westin Stamford hotel as Swissotel Singapore, the Stamford. It will also re-brand its Westin Plaza hotel in Singapore in two months time. Helfer Raid the company may also later change some of its Merchant Court brand hotels to the Swissotel brand.

Rates for the Plaza and Stamford hotels, which have about 2,000 rooms between them, may rise next year after the company takes back management control from Westin Hotels and Resorts.