Singapore’s hotel industry is suffering as Covid-19 squeezes the dollar.
In February, Singapore hotels recorded a 40% drop in overall revenue, with an overall occupancy rate of 51%.
However, serial entrepreneur Alan Goh has no plans to suspend the expansion of his local home logo in the short term.
Despite the pandemic, Alan has just introduced 4 ‘cohabitation hotels’ in Singapore under the ST Signature logo and have exceeded an occupancy rate of 80% even during closing.
The key, the entrepreneur says, is to fulfill a hidden call for “affordable luxury. “
The rooms at ST Signature have enough area for a classic hotelier, but offer more privacy than the “capsule” hostel rooms.
For example, accommodation for individual travellers is divided into compact personal rooms with S-shaped bunk beds.
Travelers also perceive non-unusual areas, such as bathrooms, more than 70% of ST Signatures rooms have en-suite bathrooms.
Without the pandemic, the logo would also have introduced social and cohabitation opportunities for its customers, Alan says.
By maximizing area savings, a night in a personal room at ST Signature can charge as little as S$40 for a single traveler in Bookings. com. This value applies to highly competitive ST Signature sites near the central business district, such as Tanjong Pay and Chinatown.
ST Signature is also fully automated. Customers just want to download the ST Hospitality app to register and register, make invoices and retrieve their room PIN that they have to move to the front desk.
The brand’s promotional point is its ability to offer travelers quality accommodation at moderate prices, Alan explains.
By keeping prices low, area savings and technology optimization, travelers can stay in quality apartments on a limited budget.
The hotel franchise remained afloat by capturing 3 target demographics.
This includes foreigners locked up in Singapore by the circuit breaker, Singaporeans staying and the growing flow of business travelers flocking as traffic routes open.
Malays who were unable to return home to the circuit breaker accounted for a significant proportion of foreigners staying in ST Signature’s cohabitation hotels.
The location, value and quality of ST Signature rooms made it an ideal choice for your budget, Alan says.
By comparison, Singaporeans account for about 30-40% of ST Signature customers.
This cohabitation hotel also offers a minimum booking time of only five hours, which corresponds to the wishes of visitors of an “intimate moment” or stopover travelers.
Alan’s to fill market gaps is a trait he has perfected since launching a nasi padang post at Bishan’s Food Junction in 1993.
At the time, there was a shortage of Indian and Muslim halal food in the food playgrounds of the newly created shopping mall.
“We had a perpetual queue for a year,” he says.
After expanding to more than 40 stalls on the island, the entrepreneur, however, introduced brands of places to eat in the 2000s, whose “overheads were less expensive than street vendor positions (at the time)”.
Consolidated the Katrina group, Alan presented in seveb
different brands F
Brands F
For example, a Chinese-designed dining spot like Hutong caters to Chinese tourists, while many mexican dining attracts Americans from the popular Clarke Quay district.
In 2018, the organization expanded into the hotel industry when Alan’s brother Joshua and son Donovan sold their new hostel companies in Katrina to inspire growth.
There are so many old buildings around Singapore . . . Instead of leaving them empty, with a low occupancy rate, we take the assets and return them in no time . . . preserving the heritage of the building and making it more modern.
Alan shows that other projects are “pending” and that the company plans to launch operations as traffic lanes open.
Without the circuit breaker, 4 projects would have been introduced before the end of the year.
However, the Katrina Group also suffered a fair percentage of losses: its vertical hotel at the time, ST Residences, grew from 400 to about two hundred apartments with hotel services, as citizens returned to their home countries as the borders closed.
Despite those setbacks, the organization is able to “expand rapidly and competitively . . . without losing momentum,” says Alan.
Hospitality is more scalable because the product is differentiated and (although) the barrier to access for catering is very low, very competitive and it is difficult to move sets of capacities (outside). He’s very competitive.
The service sector is obviously in his blood and Alan is about to abandon his hospitality adventure.
“We want to expand a niche; we’ll be the first to arrive. “
Featured Symbol Credit: Booking. com / Katrina Group