Sofitel aims for business travellers with So Singapore

SOFITEL’S inaugural hotel in Singapore will have a strong focus on individual corporate travellers when it opens by June/July 2013, while its upcoming development in Mumbai will have a dedicated MICE facility.

Located in the heart of the financial district with 134 guestrooms including 23 suites, Sofitel So Singapore is a boutique project by the luxury group, which already has a So in Bangkok and Mauritius.

Sofitel Asia-Pacific senior vice president, Markland Blaiklock, told TTGmice e-Weekly that his sales team would be contacting corporates in the vicinity to engage in their RFP process, while on the leisure side, promotions would be done via its own website and global sales offices. The average room rate of regular rooms will be around S$300 (US$245), while suites will be closer to S$600.

Due to the building’s heritage status, the hotel faced a number of size restrictions, explained Blaiklock. Aside from a small boardroom that can accommodate around 10-12 pax, there is no other meeting space. Facilities include a lobby gastrobar, a fitness centre, and a rooftop pool and bar.

He said: “Likely to be our biggest challenge is fitting all that demand into 134 rooms. Our markets will be predominantly Asian. China and Hong Kong will be big. And for Europe, it would be mostly from the UK, France and Germany. On the emerging side, there’s also some very affluent travellers from Russia and India.”

Drawing inspiration from the building’s neoclassical history and Singapore’s island status, the design theme is “empire arty”, which melds together elements such as Napoleon Bonaparte’s famous bee symbol, as well as orchids, geckos and jellyfishes.

Out of Sofitel’s 20 projects in the pipeline, more than half are in Asia, including 10 in China and two in India.

Having just opened in central Mumbai in February, the group is now working on a Sofitel Luxury Hotel and a Sofitel So in northern Mumbai, which will be part of a larger development that includes a convention facility managed by Sofitel. Scheduled to open in 2015, there will be over 400 rooms, as well as a ballroom of approximately 1,760m2, five convention halls, six meeting rooms and two boardrooms.

Blaiklock said meetings continued to be key for Sofitel in this region because of the large sizes of several properties it has, which offer more than 500 rooms.

About half of its hotels in Asia-Pacific are in China, where business has dipped slightly partly because of the economic slowdown and the leadership transition that is due to take place next month.

“This year, activity in the primary cities – Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou – is still very strong, but activity in the secondary cities has slowed. Government activity has slowed somewhat and the economy is slowing, so we’re experiencing some slowdown, but it’s not significant. I wouldn’t say people are trading down, like in the global financial crisis,” Blaiklock said.

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