LOCATION OF HOTELS IN SINGAPORE

Abstract

The onslaught of the hotel glut in the past few years had thrust the local hotel industry into the limelight. Indeed, an uncurtailed and indiscriminate hotel development trend together with a general slowdown in the number of visitor arrivals in Singapore proved to be the Achilles heel of the industry. Over the past few years, much has been written on the tourist and hotel industries in the local context. Many of the writers have expressed pessimism about the recovery of the trade in the near future, believing that the malady plaguing the hotel industry is likely to sustain throughout the next few years. None of the works, however, probed into the underlying factors affecting the decisions pertaining to the location of hotels and their probable link with the hotels' performance. This study attempts to examine this aspect of the hotels in Singapore. Empirical evidence adduced from a survey conducted for this purpose shows that accessibility, especially favourable access to potential hotel patrons, overrides all other factors influencing the location decisions for hotels. The hotel site's closeness to complementary land uses and activities is also another significant consideration affecting the choice of hotel sites. Other factors such as prestige and cost of the hotel site and institutional influence such as planning controls imposed by the Planning Authority and the designation of specific sites for hotel development by the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) are only of secondary importance in determining the location of hotels. A case study carried out on the Apollo Singapore Hotel further substantiates this argument. It reveals the developer's ranking of the factors impinging upon its location decision. An analysis of the hotel's occupancy trends shows that the hotel is more than holding its own in the industry at its present location. The case study confirms a general hypothesis which postulates that there exists a certain correlation between the location and the profitability or success of hotels in Singapore.