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Mactan hotel to set up Australian marketing office

Mactan-hotel
Party scene at dusk. The Ibiza Beach Club is a feature that the Mövenpick Hotel Mactan Island Cebu hopes will attract Australian tourists to plan a trip to Cebu. New general manager Harold Rainfroy announced their plans to set up an office in Australia to sell Cebu as an alternative to the likes of Bali and Boracay.

THE Mövenpick Hotel Mactan Island Cebu has set up an office in Australia to market Cebu as their next vacation destination.

“We want them to move out of Bali, Indonesia and pick Cebu instead,” said the resort’s new general manager Harold Rainfroy, whose career in service and hospitality management spans Europe, the Middle East and Asia for almost 30 years.

Like other high-value tourism markets, tourists from Australia are high spenders and long-staying. Rainfroy said they go on vacation for at least a week and they are into beach parties.

“Of course, there are a lot of choices of beach destinations here, but we want Cebu to overtake Boracay,” he said.

Mövenpick has Ibiza Beach Club that features indoor and outdoor ocean-view seating, sunset cocktails and nightly entertainment that include fire dances, Latin dances, and K-Pop, among others.

Tourist arrivals from Australia to Cebu grew by 13.85 percent during the first four months of the year from 14,650 in 2014 to 16,679, latest statistics from the Department of Tourism (DOT) 7 show.

Australia is the country’s fifth major market, with 83,573 arrivals as of April this year. It ranked third in terms of tourism receipts at P1.25 billion, next to United States (P3.6 billion) and Korea (P4.13 billion).

The Australaisa/Pacific accounted for 5.94 percent of the total inbound traffic for that month.

At present, the 244-room resort hotel logs an average occupancy rate of 76 percent, of which 21 rooms are occupied by long-staying guests.

Resort owner, Manny Osmeña, chairman of Manny O Group of Companies, disclosed that the resort’s revenue grew by 26 percent since the start of the year, the longest revenue growth the resort has attained since.

Rainfroy is optimistic they can grow the Australian market on the back of increased direct flights between Australia and the Philippines.

Recently, the Philippines and Australia signed an air agreement that further increases seat entitlements by 55 percent from the current 6,300 seats per week to 9,300 seats.

Arrivals from Australia rose 5.5 percent to 224,784 last year..

By Katlene O. Cacho, Source: www.sunstar.com.ph

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