THE Board of Investments (BOI) recently approved the P392.7-million hotel project of Gothong Southern Philippines Inc. in Cebu City.
Gothong Southern Properties Inc. is constructing a 10-storey, 192-room, two-star hotel on Wilson St. Lahug, Cebu City. It will be called Yello! Hotel.
Yello! Hotel is one of the hotels endorsed by the Department of Tourism (DOT) for registration as tourist accommodation facilities under the 2017 Investment Priorities Plan (IPP).
Trade Secretary and BOI Managing Head Ceferino Rodolfo, in a statement, said the hotel will cater to both local and foreign tourists coming to Cebu and the rest of Central Visayas.
He said this will fuel the robust economies of Cebu as developers partake a slice of the areas’ huge tourist markets, which are among the top destinations in the country.
The BOI also approved the P35-million hotel project of Legazpi Mei Li Inc. named “The Marison Hotel” in Legazpi City.
The Yello! Hotel will be built on a 1,064-square-meter (sq.m) property of Gothong. It will have a floor area of 7,621 sq.m when operations start on January 2019 with 76 employees on board.
Of the 192 guest rooms, 166 will be standard rooms, 17 deluxe rooms, nine executive rooms and three rooms for persons with disabilities (PWDs).
Other amenities of the Yello! Hotel include a coffee shop, bar and restaurant, a swimming pool, and three function rooms.
Under the National Tourism Development Plan, the government, through the DOT, aims to step up the tourism sector with targets of 12 million foreign arrivals and 89.2 million domestic travelers by 2022.
For this year, the DOT targets around 6.5 to seven million foreign tourist arrivals and 73.3 million domestic travelers.
The latest DOT figures show that 3.4 million foreigners have visited the country from January to June 2017, higher by nearly 400,000 compared to last year’s three million tourists in the same period.