Hoteliers Bank On Singapore River Area Improvements
<B>Hoteliers Bank On Singapore River Area Improvements</B>
By Judy Jacobs
The new Grand Copthorne hotels and the expanded Novotel Apollo are the latest improvements along the Singapore River, an area located just minutes from Singapore's downtown business district that is poised to compete with Marina Square and Orchard Road for the meetings and corporate market.
The Grand Copthorne Waterfront Singapore opened on the bank of the Singapore River just beyond Robertson Quay last fall. Created with the corporate market in mind, the 539-room hotel includes four floors of executive rooms and 25 serviced offices, which are available for rent by the hour, day, week or month. All guest rooms have modem hookups, and guests can use electronic keypads to access e-mail from their television sets. The hotel's sales executives are targeting not just individual business travelers, but the corporate meetings market as well.
"Seventy percent of our business is corporate, with about half that amounted from meetings," said Ben Bala, the Grand Copthorne's director of sales. "Most of our meetings have averaged between 70 and 100 rooms, but we can take groups of up to 300." The majority of the meetings the hotel has hosted so far have been regional meetings of three to four nights duration, and most of them have been related to high-tech, Bala added. The Grand Copthorne is part of Millennium Hotels, an international hotel group that maintains a sales office in New York City and hotels in Asia, Europe, New Zealand and the United States.
Meanwhile, one block up from the Copthorne, what was the Apollo Hotel was rebranded the Novotel Apollo Singapore last November. Novotel's new management contract comes on the heels of a major expansion and renovation project that was completed in late 1998. The S$80 million (US$47 million) project added a new 135-room wing, the Tropical Wing, which complements the previous Tower Wing and brings the total room count to 480, including 22 suites. The Tropical Wing also includes a new grand ballroom, accommodating up to 1,000 people. The hotel's previous meeting facilities consisted of three rooms, each seating up to 60 people, which continue to be used for smaller groups.
The Singapore River area has been the focus of development by the nation's government for many years, and its efforts finally are beginning to pay off.
The river has been cleaned up, old godowns (warehouses) have been converted into restaurants, pubs and shops, and the hotel product has been significantly improved, helping to make the neighborhood a new destination for corporate travelers and meeting groups. In fact, few Singapore neighborhoods can compete with the riverfront, the historic heart around which this trading city grew.
A century ago, Singapore's commercial life centered around the river, where rows of shophouses carried out the business of trade. In the 1860s, an estimated three quarters of Singapore's shipping business was conducted at Boat Quay, a curving stretch of land near the river's mouth. Over the past decade, Boat Quay has been transformed into one of Singapore's liveliest nighttime entertainment districts, with the tables of its pubs and small restaurants spilling out into the riverside promenade. Just up the river on the opposite bank, Clarke Quay was the 19th century site of warehouses and today also is a busy entertainment district of more than 50 shops and 30 restaurants.