Anchor Land enters tourism, dorm businesses

Upscale property developer Anchor Land Holdings Inc. (ALHI) is debuting into tourism and dormitory development, diversifying its revenue stream in the coming years.

With the company’s increased capital spending for 2017 amounting to P8-billion versus the previous year’s P5-billion, ALHI is primarily focused on funding its Anchor Grandsuites project and the development of its corporate office.

By next year, ALHI plans to break ground for hotel and resort projects in two major tourist hubs in the country: Boracay and Coron.

Apart from the projects in Boracay and Coron which will break ground by next year, another project that is in line with tourism initiatives is its Aseana City project in the Pagcor Entertainment City complex in the Manila Bay Area.

“Funding for these future projects is internally generated and bank sales are still very strong,” ALHI vice chair and chief executive officer Steve Li said in an interview after Anchor Land’s stockholders meeting on Thursday.

The beachfront Boracay hotel and resort development will rise on a 26,000-square meter property while the Coron Hotel and Resort development will occupy 3,000 square meters. Both developments are still in the design stage and up for construction in 2018.

Aseana City Project – Anchor Land’s fourth residential development with a boutique hotel – will rise on an 8,000-square meter lot along Belle Avenue at the ASEANA Business Park. This seeks to tap the market brought by gaming and leisure establishments.

“I think the tourism industry is really a sunshine industry and we have seen lots of foreign tourists that come over,” Li said.

“It’s a lot more affordable (here) and people compare (it with other) Asian countries. They (tourists) try to explore more. A lot of people right now people try to balance their (lives). They spend most of their time and budget into traveling, (and) quite obviously Philippines is one of the destination,” he added.

This year, ALHI will launch three of its projects: its warehouse development called Logistics Center located in Binondo; the Peak Parksuites in Davao; and, its first bed spacing or dormitory-type project in Pasay City.

Cosmos Suites is a twin-tower building offering 3,000 beds, targeting people in transit as well as employees working in the business process outsourcing (BPO) industry. Target completion date is within three years and ALHI is looking out for two to three potential locations to build similar projects.

Li said that the company was still on track with its target of growing the share of recurring income share to 15 to 20 percent target by 2020. The share of this segment is marginal at present.

“For the last two to three years, weíve been increasing our investment for recurring properties,” Li said.

By 2020, ALHI targets to have a total of 168,000 square meters of leasable space.