DoubleDragon doing well despite pandemic

Property developer DoubleDragon Properties Corp. is not writing off 2020 despite the prolonged lockdown of Metro Manila as its chain of community-based shopping malls, all located outside the National Capital Region, remain operational while its hotels are nearly filled by business process outsourcing (BPO) employees.

DoubleDragon chair Edgar Sia II told the Inquirer that all 37 community malls under DoubleDragon subsidiary CityMall Commercial Centers were currently operational.

“For CityMalls, since it’s a community center with only about 7,000 square meters per site, about 75 percent of the tenants are basic essentials providers: supermarket, pharmacy, food, clinic, banks and money remittance centers,” Sia said.

Outside of the CityMall chain, DoubleDragon has two shopping malls in Metro Manila—the retail component at its head office DoubleDragon Plaza at the Mall of Asia complex, and Dragon8 shopping center in Binondo. This brings its total shopping mall footprint to 39 nationwide.

For the two malls in the metropolis, the essential providers, like food retailers, are operational.

Sia also said DoubleDragon’s hotel properties under the JinJiang Inn and Hotel101 brands currently enjoyed a 94-percent occupancy rate despite the enhanced community quarantine (ECQ).

“It’s because they house the BPO employees,” Sia said. “We have five BPO companies who got our rooms and their employees are served by our hotels as the BPO companies were required by the government to provide their employees a place to stay near their offices as a condition for the continuous operation of their call centers.”

Sia said DoubleDragon had provided its skeleton workforce at hotels the necessary provisions and protection so they could keep serving long-staying guests.

“All our hotels are operational but only to long-staying guests, like the BPO employees who have been staying since the ECQ started,” Sia said.

To date, DoubleDragon has built a leasable area of 803,000 square meters while total acquired prime properties now stood at 200.67 hectares.