Centara Plaza Hotel Plc (Centel) has planned 26 billion baht in investments over three years, with a key project to operate a hotel in Japan, tapping into the growth of visitors to the World Expo.
Ronnachit Mahattanapreut, senior vice-president of finance and administration, said 7.5 billion baht is allocated for this year, 11 billion for next year, and 7.5 billion for 2021 for both hotel and food businesses.
Of the funds, 10.8 billion baht is earmarked for mergers and acquisitions, both locally and overseas, notably seeking hotel investments in Japan to cash in on the expectation of robust visitor numbers to the World Expo in Osaka in 2025.
"This year will be another challenging one for us as we plan to renovate two hotels, visitors from China rebound and the price war heats up competition," Mr Ronnachit told investors at the SET Opportunity Day.
The two properties scheduled for renovation include Centara Grand at CentralWorld, with a partial facelift starting in the second quarter this year, lasting 22 months with a budget of 700 million baht. The company will also use 1.2 billion baht to renovate Centara Grand Beach Resort Samui for one year, starting in June.
The growing tourism and business sentiment this year will be main reasons Centel reaches the targeted revenue, expanding by 5% from 21.8 billion baht earned in 2018, he said.
The company's occupancy rate will reach 83-85% this year from an average of 82.6% last year.
For expansion plans in the hotel business, Centel wants to open COSI Pattaya Naklua beach in September and manage three hotels under the management agreements in Doha, Si Racha in Chon Buri and Ao Nang in Krabi.
Mr Ronnachit said the company's food business will grow by 3-4% compared with to only 0.1% last year.
In 2018 Centel had 12 billion baht of revenue from food business, representing 55% of total revenue. The remaining 9.76 billion baht came from hotels.