Alliance Global bullish on tourism, leisure prospects

MANILA, Philippines — The tourism and leisure sector appears to be the current apple of the eye of Andrew Tan’s listed holding company Alliance Global Group Inc.

AGI president and CEO Kevin Tan said among the group’s diversified business segments, it is tourism and leisure which it is most bullish in terms of growth.

“We believe that each of our segments have their own long term growth stories. But we are most excited about the growth opportunities presented by our tourism and leisure segment represented by Travellers International Hotel Group and Megaworld,” Tan said during AGI’s annual stockholders’ meeting yesterday.

“This is because we still see an enormous potential in the country’s hospitality sector, which is recovering from its pre-pandemic performance,” he said.

With the sector currently on a recovery mode, Tan said AGI sees a lot of potential for it to reach or even surpass pre-pandemic levels.

As such, he said the group continues to expand its offering in the hospitality sector with a plan to bring its total hotel room keys around 12,000 in the next few years from its 2023 capacity of around 7,500 keys.

Tan said AGI is also actively developing more locations for MICE (meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions) activities throughout the country.

Further, he said the group is also investing in human capital by providing hospitality training courses through its academy of leisure and tourism in order to develop the next generation of world class hospitality professionals.

“We are doing all these because we truly believe that the country’s tourism and leisure sector is an emerging bright spot for the Philippines.. We want to maintain our market leadership in this sector and be a key participant in a significant growth potential,” Tan said.

For its real estate business under Megaworld, Tan said AGI expects all segments to see good growth this year, with the strongest top line improvement likely to come from lifestyle malls and hotel operations.

He said malls and hotel operations are expected to sustain their improved occupancy rate as consumer discretionary spending remains very healthy.

“Our residential segment should also continue to do well benefiting from higher project completion and historically strong sales pickup. It is also important to note that Megaworld is among the biggest players in the luxury segment, a market largely unaffected by economic slowdown,” Tan said.

“It is for this reason that we expect our reservation sales this year to continue to grow, possibly hitting P145 billion as we provide the market with more exciting and curated product offerings through our townships all over the country,” he said.

Tan said AGI is also confident that Megaworld’s premium office segment would maintain its above industry occupancy rate and performance given the resilience of the country’s business process outsourcing sector and the resurgence of traditional office demand.

“AGI remains steadfast and dedicated to driving growth across all its business segments, mindful of its goal to elevate global consumer preferences through aspirational product offerings,” he said.

As part of its commitment to sustain its recent growth pace, AGI has allocated P75 billion in capital expenditure this year, an increase of 19 percent from its actual spend of P63-billion last year.