[photopress:hotels_missenberg.jpg,full,alignright]Accor Asia Pacific boss Michael Issenberg, is packing up and moving the company’s regional headquarters to Singapore. He said the siren call of China and India — where Accor is now developing 100 hotels with plans for many more — has proved impossible to resist.
Michael Issenberg said, ‘It was inevitable and could not be put off any longer. The weight of development is now in Asia — we now have more than 330 hotels through the Asia-Pacific region, with more on the way.’
Issenberg sees the biggest opportunities in China.
He said, ‘China is unbelievable — what a future it has. I know my own industry is booming but that is only one small part of a very large picture — I can’t even imagine what is happening elsewhere.’
More than anything else, Michael Issenberg says it’s the speed of change that is most confronting.
He cites an Accor development near Hainan Island in which a 440-room ‘absolutely deluxe five-star hotel’, a 1,500-seat convention centre, a road and bridge were built in just 11 months.
He said, ‘In other places you are shown master plans and it may or may not happen, but in China it always does.’
Accor is putting its own money into the country and wants to own 200,000 rooms in China by 2010. It’s already well on the way, with 60 Ibis budget properties under construction in high-growth areas.
Source: The Australian
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