Riding on the success of its airline business, the Gokongwei family formally launched its no-frills hotel chain targeting budget-conscious travelers.
“We have simplified the hotel experience,” Robinsons Land Corp. president Frederick Go said at the first Go Hotel in Mandaluyong City last Friday.
Go said the company used its business experience in Cebu Pacific to make hotel rooms affordable, especially to businessmen from other provinces.
He explained that by making reservations online to book a room to be availed several months later allows some guests to bag a room for only P388 a night.
“Of course, if you walk in or avail yourself of the room a night before your reservation, it can go as high as P1,800,” he added.
Likewise, Go said there’s nothing in the room that a guest can charge to his or her account since there is no minibar.
“We excluded everything you are asked at the checkout counter. But anything in the room is free, even the Wi-Fi connection,” he said.
Located beside the Robinsons Shopping Mall along Edsa and near the Shaw MRT Mandaluyong, Go Hotel is a budget-hotel Robinsons Land will replicate in 30 locations in the country. Some of the hotels are expected built and operate this year, while all of them are expected built by 2013.
Go Hotel general manager Liz D. Gregorio said the chain will also be offered as a franchise.
“[We are] now welcoming offers from parties who are interested to franchise or sell their land,” Gregorio was quoted in a statement, adding these are “people with the entrepreneurial drive to boost our tourism industry.”
The hotel industry is reeling from the negative effects of a hostage crisis that led to deaths of tourists from Hong Kong. But Go said that since Go Hotel opened three months ago, occupancy was averaging 90 percent. “We even had to turn away guests,” he said.
A guest from Los Angeles, California, who requested anonymity said staying at the hotel was convenient for him since it’s nearer the 73-square-meter condominium unit he bought from Robinsons Land for P3.7 million. He told the BusinessMirror that there’s no room service and he eats outside or at the shopping mall.
He added there’s no smoking in any of the 151 rooms.
He said, however, the online reservation, which he did in May, was “a bit complicated.” Likewise, he said when extending his stay, the room rates went up to P8,000 for a week’s stay.
Still, he said his one-week stay at the hotel has been “comfortable” enough. “It’s a no-frills hotel,” he said.
While there’s no swimming pool or gym in the Go Hotel’s pilot site, the company said it has a spa. It also said in the statement that guests can take breakfast at restaurants at the ground floor, and avail themselves of taxi and laundry services.
