GLOBAL realtor Colliers International Philippines is projecting that Mactan Island will see more hotels and leisure-oriented projects over the medium term.
“Mactan-Cebu International Airport (MCIA) has been recognized as one of the best in Asia. Colliers believes that this bodes well for Cebu’s leisure sector,” Colliers senior research manager Joey Bondoc said Friday, Nov. 1, 2019.
“Over the near to medium term we should see more hotels and resort-oriented condominiums being developed in Metro Cebu especially in the Mactan area,” he said.
Residential prices in Cebu have consistently gone up while hotel occupancy rates are at 80 to 90 percent and these point to a vibrant property sector in Cebu, Bondoc said.
“We are expecting leisure and residential sectors to be driven by sustained tourist arrivals. The Cebu property is also buoyed by a continuously thriving business process managment sector,” he said.
Recently, Cebu was ranked by a survey by travel website Sleeping in Airports as the 16th best airport in Asia in 2019.
“The award only shows that the MCIA expansion project is an example of a well-executed partnership between the government and private sector in improving the country’s infrastructure backbone. This should be an example for future big-ticket infrastructure projects in the country,” Bondoc noted.
Factors
According to Colliers, the demand for hospitality projects within Mactan are buoyed by a number of factors including the recent mounting of additional direct routes from MCIA to Taiwan and South Korea; upcoming infrastructure projects in the province such as the Cebu Bus Rapid Transit, Cebu-Cordova bridge and the Cebu monorail project; and the completion of the integrated resort and casino The Emerald in 2020.
“Hotels built within townships, like the Savoy Hotel in Mactan Newtown, also have an advantage in terms of convenience because of nearby retail and leisure components. The presence of office towers also makes it an attractive option for business travelers,” the property consultancy company said in a research note earlier.
Colliers recommends that developers should continue building hotels within integrated communities and highlight amenities of the area as well as accessibility to and from the Mactan Newtown beach.
Offering discount in-hotel restaurants should also be an attractive add-on to enhance the overall hotel experience of travelers, it said.
In recent years, tourism investments have continued to pour in to Mactan, with the opening of Dusit Thani Mactan Cebu Resort earlier this year and Savoy Hotel Mactan Newtown this month. CSL