Vista Land & Lifescapes Inc., the property developer led by billionaire Manuel Villar, said it plans to construct four new hotels under the “Mella” brand in a bid to transform the company into an integrated real estate company with a strong recurring income.
Villar, who serves as chairman of Vista Land, said the company was currently building two new hotels worth P1.6 billion, including one in Boracay and another in Las Piñas City.
Two more hotels in Tagaytay and Bataan are in the pipeline. These four hotels will add to the current 54-key Boracay Sands Hotel at Station 3 of Boracay in Aklan, which the company acquired in December 2015.
Villar said the company planned to build a chain of three and four-star hotels, with an average size of 150 to 200 rooms each.
Vista Land said it would invest P1 billion for the Boracay project, located beside the Shangri La Resort, and another P600 million in the Las Piñas hotel.
The new hotel chain will be called Mella, short for Vista Land’s most popular housing brand Camella Homes.
“The hotel chain will be for the middle market, [with] about three to four stars,” said Villar.
“We are still feeling our way in the hotel business, but we plan to go big and will soon be ramping up our expansion,” he said.
Vista Land already has a condo-hotel in the upscale Crosswinds Tagaytay. Villar said the company would also put up a Mella hotel beside it.
The hotel expansion is in line with the company’s plan to boost recurring income, he said.
“By 2020, Vista Land will be completely different. It will be a complete real estate company. We will have horizontal and vertical residential projects, hotels, malls and BPO offices,” said Villar.
“We’re trying to go fast, so the ratio of leasing income will be growing. Moving forward, it will be like the rate of the other major property companies,” he said.
Vista Land has presence in 95 cities and municipalities across 36 provinces and intends to focus on the development of the so-called communicities—integrated urban developments combining lifestyle retail, prime office space, university town, healthcare, themed residential developments and leisure component.
