DoubleDragon sets up office in Singapore

Edgar “Injap” Sia II

MANILA, Philippines — The hospitality arm of property developer DoubleDragon Properties Corp. has set up an overseas subsidiary in Singapore that will focus on the offshore selling of Hotel 101 condotel units.

DoubleDragon disclosed to the Philippine Stock Exchange on Wednesday that Hotel of Asia Inc. (HOA) had received its certificate of incorporation in Singapore for the registration of wholly-owned selling arm Hotel101 Worldwide Private Ltd.

Hotel101 is an affordable hotel whose units are sold to buyers seeking recurring earnings out of their property assets.  The units are pooled and managed by HOA and investors in each property get a uniform rate of return.

The prototype for this hospitality brand is the 518-room Hotel 101-Manila property in the Bay area, which has given early unit owners 7.04 percent gross yield on their investment in the last 12 months from December 2017 to November 2018.

The creation of the new unit in Singapore jumpstarts HOA’s plan to incorporate a string of international wholly-owned selling arm subsidiaries in Singapore, Hong Kong, Middle East, Japan, London, Italy, and the United States to focus on the international sales of Hotel101 projects in the Philippines starting this year.

Hotel101 is seen to comprise majority of the 5,000 hotel rooms that DoubleDragon targets to have in its portfolio by 2020. 

To date, DoubleDragon has 876 operating hotel rooms across five properties nationwide and has another 4,207 new hotel rooms in the pipeline, bringing its total portfolio to 5,083 hotel rooms today across Hotel101, Jinjiang Inn, Skysuites, and Ascott-DD Meridian Park brands.

A total of six Hotel101 projects are expected to simultaneously pre-sell this year located in Fort Bonifacio (Taguig), Davao, Boracay, Bohol, Palawan, and Cebu. 

DoubleDragon now has a total of P14.53 billion in Hotel101 unit inventory that it expects to fully sell out within the next two years. 

“DoubleDragon derives revenues from Hotel101 twice — firstly, from the pre-selling of the units during the construction phase and secondly, once the projects are completed the properties start to generate steady recurring revenues from the hotel operations,” said DoubleDragon chair Edgar Sia II. 

“Hotel101 units are also an ideal real estate investment for our hard-working OFWs (overseas Filipino workers) who would like to reinvest in the Philippines but do not have the time to actively manage their real estate investments back home. Hotel101 will offer them a steady stream of recurring income backed by condominium unit titles that allows them to participate both in the robust long-term prospects of the real estate industry as well as the rapid growth in tourism in the Philippines,” he added.

DoubleDragon targets to complete a leasable portfolio of 1.2 million square meters by 2020 comprising of 700,000 square meters from 100 community malls under the brand CityMall; 300,000 square meters from its Metro Manila office projects DD Meridian Park and Jollibee Tower; 100,000 square meters from the planned 5,000 hotel rooms of Hotel101 and Jinjiang Inn Philippines; and another 100,000 square meters of industrial space from various CentralHub sites across Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao.