Hotel101 bound for Nasdaq

The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite may have tumbled into bear territory as markets recoiled from President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs, but that will not stop DoubleDragon Corp. from pursuing its goal to list Hotel101, its homegrown international hospitality chain.

DoubleDragon, the property venture of tycoons Edgar Sia II and Tony Tan Caktiong, has submitted additional required documents, putting it another step closer to listing its growing brand.

Earlier, it submitted to the US Securities and Exchange Commission its registration statement for the $2.3-billion listing under the ticker “HBNB.”

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While the long listing process continues, Hotel101 is proceeding as scheduled with the construction of its first hotels abroad.

The 680-room Hotel101-Madrid Spain, for example, will top off on April 11, just 11 months after construction started in May 2024.

No doubt the challenges have been daunting, but Sia and Tan Caktiong—both born in the Year of the Dragon—are not wavering.

One way or another, Hotel101 will make history as the first hospitality company from the Philippines to list on Nasdaq.  —Tina Arceo-Dumlao

Bonifacio CBD still ‘it’

Before it became the commercial and corporate go-to that it is today, the Bonifacio central business district (CBD) was a military base known as Fort Bonifacio.

Though high-rise buildings have long been sprouting here and there as more companies set up shop in this posh pocket of Taguig City, 2024 was a relatively weak year (by its own standards) for Bonifacio CBD.

But such is no longer the case this year, at least in the first quarter.

The Bonifacio area is regaining its charm among corporations, particularly the global in-house centers (GICs) like banking giant JP Morgan Chase.

GICs are service delivery offices wholly owned by multinational firms, but these are typically located in countries where the cost of operations are lower, like the Philippines.

These offices are what drove office space demand in Bonifacio CBD higher in the first three months of the year, according to Leechiu Property Consultants Inc.

In its Q1 2025 Property Market Report, the real estate broker found that office demand in the area from January to March was at 51,000 square meters.

This already represents 55 percent of its total demand in the whole of 2024, says Mikko Barranda, commercial leasing head at Leechiu.

“That’s correlated with the fact that many shared services, many GICs are growing, and they’re selecting the main CBDs (central business districts), primarily [Bonifacio CBD], as their first site or the site where they want to grow and expand,” he adds.

One good example is JP Morgan, which has nearly doubled its real estate in Megaworld’s Uptown Bonifacio from 70,000 sq m three years ago.

Overall, the first quarter of the year was rosy for the once-weak office sector.

We’re hoping that this doesn’t happen exclusively in the Bonifacio area, especially since Leechiu has projected a 16-percent demand growth for the entire sector this year.

Fingers crossed! —Meg J. Adonis