Rooms
The hotel offers 162 rooms, and there were a number of objects with tongue-in-cheek references to magical illusions that made my room memorable. For instance, the custom-designed vanity mirror frame is an optical illusion that makes it appear as two mirrors. The bed too seemed to levitate.
Named “The Prestige” to conjure imagery of elegance and sophistication, the hotel’s deign also takes cues from the eponymous movie The Prestige starring Christian Bale. The movie was set in the Victorian era, and related a story about the illusory art of magic.
MICE facilities
Meeting spaces on the hotel’s rooftop (level four) includes an air-conditioned pavilion and terrace, perfect for intimate meetings and product launches for up to 80 guests. Smaller gatherings can make use of the rooftop’s outdoor space to hold a cocktail event or welcome dinner. The latter is a stellar option for evening functions, thanks to spectacular sunset views.
Meanwhile, next to the pavilion and terrace are two 72m2 function rooms. Each can fit up to 27 people classroom-style, and when combined, can hold around 60 delegates.
One of the advantages of the hotel’s location is that it is only minutes away from major historical sites such as Fort Cornwallis and Pinang Peranakan Mansion; as well as popular art, culture and dining options along the Heritage Trail of Penang.
As such, organisers will be able to include Amazing Race-esque teambuilding sessions, or recreational activities in the evenings after a day of heavy discussions.
Other facilities
The Glasshouse restaurant offers both local and international cuisine, and is part of the hotel’s Prestige Arcade, an enclave of 12 dining and retail outlets. Should delegates not want to venture outside after a long day of meetings, meals can be taken here.
Meanwhile, recreational facilities include a saltwater infinity pool overlooking the Straits of Melaka and a 24-hour gym.
Service
The staff are service-orientated and aim to please. The receptionist was also very knowledgeable about local attractions nearby and suggested a few places she thought would interest me.
Verdict
I enjoyed my stay and I will definitely return when I am in town for a holiday. It has everything a business or leisure traveller would want.
Marriott International has expanded its portfolio in the Philippines with the opening of Sheraton Manila, located just across the road from Ninoy Aquino International Airport Terminal 3.
Part of Resorts World Manila’s integrated complex, the 390-room offers a range of accommodation from two-level lofts to deluxe guestrooms with a private garden and Jacuzzi.
Sheraton Manila
Leisure facilities include the 24-hour SheratonÒ Fitness; Shine Spa with six relaxing treatment rooms; expansive heated outdoor pool; and an executive lounge. There are also three F&B options on site: all-day dining and buffet restaurant S Kitchen, Korean barbecue Oori; as well as The Lounge for tipples and quick bites.
The Sheraton Manila also aims to cater to business travellers, by being the first in the country to have a co-working space located in a hotel. The ColLab is a modern high-tech hub featuring six private rooms and a 415m2 common area, suitable for product launches and networking events. This is in addition to nine other meeting spaces, including a ballroom that can accommodate up to 570 people.
CWT has appointed Andrew Gunnels as the company’s first chief procurement officer.
In this newly-created position, Gunnels will have responsibility over CWT’s global strategic sourcing and procurement operations and will also lead the company’s global real estate and facilities management. He also oversees the global indirect portfolio of third party purchases.
Gunnels reports to Michelle Frymire, executive vice president and CFO at CWT.
Prior to joining CWT, Gunnels served as senior vice president at First Data, where he helped lead the full transformation of its global strategic sourcing function that delivered financial improvements for the firm.
Gunnels first started in the travel industry a decade ago via Delta Air Lines where he started in the corporate finance function, before moving over to the airline’s supply chain management organisation.
Air New Zealand has appointed CFO Jeff McDowall as acting CEO, as a global search goes underway to replace Christopher Luxon when he leaves the role on September 25.
Taking up the acting CEO role from September 26, McDowall is not seeking permanent appointment to the role, according to a statement issued from the airline. He will be remain the airline’s interim chief until a successful candidate is found, which may not be until 1Q2020.
McDowall’s previous roles at Air New Zealand include group general manager corporate finance and group general manager commercial. Prior to Air New Zealand, he worked across a variety of industries in Asia, the US and the UK.
Meanwhile, general manager corporate finance Stephan Deschamps will take over as acting CFO on September 26.
In addition, the airline’s chairman Tony Carter will also retire on September 25 at the annual shareholders meeting. He will be replaced by current director Therese Walsh, who is leading the CEO search process on behalf of the board.
Wyndham Hotels & Resorts has named Rex Loh vice president, commercial, overseeing the South-east Asia and Pacific Rim region.
In his new role, Loh will be responsible for leading and driving sales, marketing, revenue management and distribution efforts for Wyndham Hotels & Resorts in the region.
Loh has more than two decades of hospitality experience under his belt, and was previously cluster director of sales & marketing at Marriott International, where he oversaw JW Marriott Singapore South Beach, The St Regis Singapore and W Sentosa Cove.
Before that, he held leadership roles at InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) including director, commercial – Asia and Australasia resorts, responsible for sales and marketing functions of 26 resorts in Thailand, Vietnam, the Maldives, Indonesia, Fiji, Mauritius and French Polynesia. Prior to IHG, Loh held director roles at hotels under luxury brands like Ritz Carlton and Shangri-La.
Grand Hyatt Hong Kong has appointed Charis Yim as executive assistant manager – sales and marketing.
In her new position, Yim will oversee and develop the sales & marketing division of the 542-room hotel, Hyatt’s first flagship Grand Hyatt hotel in Asia.
She joins Grand Hyatt from JW Marriott Hotel Hong Kong, where she held the position of director of marketing.
A seasoned hotelier with over 20 years of experience, Yim has held senior management roles at multiple luxury hotels in Hong Kong and Macau, including The Peninsula, InterContinental and Mandarin Oriental.
Mövenpick Resort & Spa Jimbaran Bali has appointed Chanelle Rose Garvey and Shelly Darcy to the positions of executive assistant manager and director of sales & marketing respectively.
From left: Chanelle Rose Garvey and Shelly Darcy
Hailing from Australia, Garvey comes to the resort with an extensive hospitality background, specifically in sales and marketing. She began her career working for branded hotels in Sydney and Melbourne, Australia. In 2006, Garvey joined Accor where she was tasked to head sales and marketing departments for a succession of Sofitel and Novotel properties in South-east Asia.
Meanwhile, Darcy is no stranger to Bali an she has worked exclusively in the island’s luxury hotel sector for almost a decade in the area of sales. Her career with Accor began in 2013 where she handled Sofitel Bali for six years.
For Thailand to remain an attractive destination and reap greater revenue from the lucrative tourism industry in the next decade, it has to adopt and execute smart city strategies to digitally transform its travel infrastructure and systems for the future.
As Thailand’s travel and tourism sector posted six per cent growth to see a record 38.4 million tourists in 2018, a number of the country’s airports are approaching capacity and popular destinations are starting to show the impact of overtourism, both of which could limit the rate of future tourism growth if not urgently addressed, according to the Thailand Towards 2030: Future of Travel & Tourism report released by Amadeus in collaboration with Thailand’s Digital Economy Promotion Agency (DEPA) and PATA.
From left: Pracha Asawateera and Simon Akeroyd shared the findings of a report concerning Thailand’s travel and tourism sector
In particular, airports – typically the first point of contact for foreign tourists into the country – should figure high up on Thailand’s national agenda, stated Simon Akeroyd, vice president corporate strategy & business development, Amadeus, sharing the findings of the collaborative report in Bangkok earlier this week.
“Thailand needs to fundamentally change how its airports function,” he stressed, pointing to the frequent bottlenecks observed at the immigrations at Bangkok Suvarnabhumi Airport.
However, such traffic congestion usually affects a small part of the terminal while other areas of the airport remain underused, Akeroyd said, resulting in missed opportunities on the operators’ part to divert passenger flows and derive greater revenue from passenger spending on F&B or duty free shopping.
The adoption of smart technology at Thailand’s airports, besides the physical expansion of the facilities, will help to ease some of the strain as the country struggles with visitor influx.
Akeroyd recommends that self-serve check-in kiosks, automated bag-drop and use of biometrics for passenger identification, technologies which Amadeus has respectively deployed in Hong Kong International Airport (HKIA), Singapore Changi Airport and Los Angeles International Airport, could significantly increase the efficiency of passenger movements at Thailand’s airports.
To fully tap Thailand’s potential as a MICE destination and accelerate the sector’s growth, Akeroyd also critical attention to improving inter-model air-to-city links to support a seamless travel experience, pointing to Heathrow Express in London, Hong Kong’s Airport Express and Shanghai Maglev as fine examples of transport solutions that allow people to move back and forth with ease between the airport and the city.
“Ease and speed of travel will become major differentiators amongst the region’s MICE hotspots in the near future, so these cities need to invest in technologies that are designed for convenience – such as having off-airport check-in and bag-drop facilities at conference venues themselves. The technology needs to be best-in-class because Thailand is competing with MICE destinations across the region, not just domestically,” he said.
“Airports are not the end of a long line,” he remarked, underlining the need to rethink Thailand’s airports as a hub-and-spoke operation. “Airports are still seen as a separate entity (connected by) a long line into the city, but instead airports should be conceived as a hub that leads to other parts of the city.”
Amadeus urges the Thai government to place airports high up on the agenda to better facilitate visitor flow into the country; Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok pictured
The report also identifies increased public-private partnerships to scale up smart mobility – where data and technology are integrated to improve the efficiency of population movements around a city – as another key area of opportunity for Thailand’s cities to curb congestion and pollution.
“Smart mobility is still in its infancy in Thailand, but its potential to improve inner-city travel is enormous,” said Akeroyd. “Using transport data to inform travel management systems like traffic lights in real-time, or to inform how ‘sharing economy’ services like Grab and Get are deployed, are just two significant applications. But this won’t be possible without greater public-private sector partnerships.”
According to the report, one major challenge is that Thailand’s public sector doesn’t currently know which companies to partner with, whilst private firms, especially smaller businesses, start-ups and overseas investors, often don’t know how to engage, so third-party advisers may be important in bringing key players together.
Meanwhile, DEPA identifies access to capital as another barrier in Thailand and recommends that cities will need to form ‘City Development Companies’ with private sector partners in the future – to better bid for funding and to formalise the nature of their partnership.
“Right now, we’re only just scratching the surface of what’s possible with smart mobility. More provinces need to follow the City Development Company model being piloted by Phuket, Chiang Mai and Khon Kaen to access vital funding and plan for the long term,” said Pracha Asawateera, vice president southern district office, DEPA.
Phuket, which is largely reliant on tourism as an economic generator, commenced the Smart City Project four years ago to use data in tourism management and development in the city, according to Pracha.
Finally, the report also identifies the need for more action to be taken to protect Thailand’s tourist hotspots from the risks of overtourism.
As the Phuket Smart City Project has shown, data can be used for real-time analysis and predictive modelling to manage tourism more sustainably, said Akeroyd.
The “enormous amount of data” that Amadeus has of travel booking patterns and correlations around the world will be a valuable tool for tourism boards, local authorities and hospitality businesses in managing visitor flow and the promotion of second-tier cities, e.g. driving travellers to less crowded places at the right time.
On its part, Amadeus has stepped up its focus on Thai and Asian startups and initiatives that tackle sustainable tourism issues, including supporting enterprises such as Syngerera, which is developing enterprise applications in carbon offsetting and sustainable jet fuel, in its Amadeus Next initiative.
A full copy of the Thailand Towards 2030: Future of Travel & Tourism report can be downloaded here.
More visitors to Singapore need not fill out paper cards upon arrival at Changi Airport if they submit electronic arrival cards beforehand
More visitors to Singapore will be able to submit electronic arrival cards online or through a mobile app up to 14 days before their arrival, as part of an Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA) trial, according to The Straits Times.
The move is an extension of a trial ICA has been conducting on electronic arrival cards since last October, said the report.
More visitors to Singapore need not fill out paper cards upon arrival at Changi Airport if they submit electronic arrival cards beforehand
ICA said in a statement that only foreign travellers with selected transport operators can submit electronic arrival cards in place of the paper-based disembarkation/embarkation cards that they are currently required to submit on arrival.
The transport operators included in the trial are AirAsia, Jetstar Asia, Cathay Pacific, Singapore Airlines, Transtar Travel, BatamFast Ferries, Bintan Resort Ferries, Horizon Fast Ferry and Majestic Fast Ferry.
Under the new system, they will need to produce only their passports for immigration clearance upon arrival, as the ICA’s system would already have their electronic arrival cards which were submitted in advance, according to a statement by the ICA.
All other visitors are still required to complete the paper-based disembarkation/embarkation cards. This includes those arriving at sea checkpoints via cruise liners, land checkpoints via rail, cars, motorcycles and lorries, and those entering Singapore to assume work pass status, said the authority.
ICA said that it will study the results of this trial and progressively extend the SG Arrival Card e-service to all foreign visitors.
The electronic arrival card is expected to replace the paper-based cards by 2021, said the Straits Times report.
Malaysia will be the first country in the region to host Radiodays Asia (RDA) 2019 when the conference takes place from August 27 to 28.
To be held at Hotel Istana Kuala Lumpur, the conference will bring around 500 delegates, alongside an estimated RM5.4 million (US$1.3 million) to the country’s economy.
View of Kuala Lumpur from Lake Titiwangsa
Themed “Meet the Future of Radio and Audio”, Radiodays Asia 2019 will focus on the future of radio and audio businesses, exposing broadcasters in Asia to advanced strategies and ideas. The conference will also focus on the challenges and developments of the industry through a series of talk sessions and knowledge exchange platforms.
The event stems from Radiodays Europe (RDE), an international conference for radio professionals in Europe and across the world. First introduced in 2010, the event has been held annually, rotating to different host cities. The bid was first made in 2017, where Malaysia ousted competitors such as Dubai, Singapore and Sydney.
“We are honoured to have Radiodays Asia 2019 for the first time in Asia, and here in Kuala Lumpur. I was informed that RDA planned to hold their event annually in Kuala Lumpur for a three-year period, starting next year.
“Having Radiodays Asia here in our country will benefit the radio broadcasters in Malaysia, and offer the opportunity to showcase Malaysia to an international audience,” said Zulkefli Sharif, CEO of Malaysia Convention & Exhibition Bureau.
Just 10 minutes from Phuket International Airport on the serene northern coast, this 178-key, Bill Bensley-designed resort offers delegates a quiet, tropical paradise steeped in Phuket’s tin-mining heritage
The newly-opened Ritz-Carlton, Bangkok anchors the One Bangkok development with cosmopolitan elegance. Featuring the city's largest ballroom and a spectacular new penthouse suite, it delivers exceptional hardware and deeply authentic, soulful service for business and leisure travellers alike
Behind the imposing, Brutalist concrete that defines Zurich’s Oerlikon district lies a surprising secret. While its exterior honours the neighbourhood’s industrial roots, stepping inside Mama Shelter reveals a vibrant, neon-soaked world that is a far cry from its rigid shell
