Oakwood Opens Extended Stay in Asia
<B> Oakwood Opens Extended Stay in Asia</B>
By Lynn Woods
Oakwood Corporate Housing, the Los Angeles-based manager and owner of extended-stay apartments whose clientele includes more than 400 Fortune 500 companies, has expanded into Asia with the recent debut of an Oakwood Residence apartment building in Bangkok. It will be followed with the opening of properties in Guangzhou, China, and Manila by the end of this year and in Jakarta and Tokyo sometime in 2000, cumulatively adding up to a total of 1,500 units.
The "serviced apartments" in Asia are a hybrid of extended-stay and corporate housing, with daily maid service, 24-hour front desk, a health club, swimming pool and a restaurant. The other apartments range in size from 600 to 2,500 square feet. They will be available on a daily or extended-stay basis, at rates lower than those at a four-star hotel, said Robert Philips, Oakwood's director of international communications.
In Manila, the Oakwood property will consist of the first "Oakwood Premier" luxury apartments, a new brand that will feature, in addition to the above services, a washer and dryer in each unit (rare in most Asian apartments), 200-threadcount linens, onsite dry cleaning, kitchens with Noritake china and the use of sport utility vehicles for airport pickup and guest limo service. Oakwood staff can assist guests with school placement for children, medical referrals and other needs.
Philips said the company has been getting more requests for global contracts and is in the midst of working out a deal with a major corporation for apartments in the United States and Asia. "Three or four years ago, we'd never have seen that," he said. The average length of stay at Oakwood Corporate Housing is 70 nights, he added. Companies generally need to have a volume of more than 50,000 room nights to negotiate a deal.
In the United States, Oakwood recently acquired new luxury apartment buildings to replace its aging flagships in Atlanta, Minneapolis and Thousand Oaks, Calif. It also recently acquired Great West Corporate Housing, a subsidiary of Denver-based Simpson Housing LP, which will result in 200 corporate apartment leases in Denver and Dallas, adding to the stock the company already maintains in those two cities. Oakwood, whose annual revenues exceed $500 million and whose real estate portfolio is valued at more than $1.6 billion, currently maintains 20,000 apartments in the United States and is adding to its rooms in Great Britain and Canada.
Oakwood also maintains 40 warehouses across the United States stocked with everything from cribs to fax machines and extra place settings, in order to meet guests' special needs.
In other news, Oakwood has announced a new three-year alliance with Enterprise Rent-A-Car Co., which replaces a previous arrangement with the Hertz Corp. Enterprise cars will be offered at special rates to Oakwood residents, and the alliance is expected to bring Enterprise more than 15,000 rentals, averaging a duration of three weeks.
As part of the agreement, Enterprise also will take over former Hertz locations at three California Oakwood properties, in Marina del Rey, Hollywood/Toluca Lake and Mountain View. The car rental firm is considering opening five additional locations at Oakwood properties in 2000, Philips said.