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Q&A: Minor CCO Michael Marshall talks expansion

Minor Hotels has been moving and shaking lately in the expansion department. New Anantaras have opened in Sri Lanka and Oman, and the company just opened its first European location, the Anantara Vilamoura Algarve Resort, in Portugal. In September, Minor’s upscale Avani brand opened its first new-build property, the Avani Riverside Bangkok Hotel, and just last month, the company completed the final stage of its acquisition of Tivoli Hotels & Resorts in Portugal.

HOTELS sat down with Michael Marshall, Minor’s chief commercial officer, to talk future acquisitions, ROI and whether there’s any talk of U.S. expansion on the table.

Michael Marshall
Michael Marshall

HOTELS: Minor has seen a lot of expansion this past year. What brands or regions are leading the growth charge?

MM: Recently we opened two hotels in a month. One is the Anantara Al Jabal Al Akhdar, which is a beautiful hotel up in the mountains — sort of Oman’s mini mountain range. It’s about 2,000 meters above sea level, so, fantastic views. The second one is right down the south coast in Dhofar, the Al Baleed Resort.

The country that’s very interesting and growing, and particularly growing as well from the U.S., is Sri Lanka.

The most exciting news forthcoming in April is our first Anantara in Europe, the Anantara Vilamoura Algarve Resort in Portugal. It is surrounded by five beautiful golf courses. This is our start to get a foothold in Europe for the Anantara brand, and Portugal is a very up and coming destination, too, for the U.S. market.

HOTELS: How are you managing the growth, and how big do you ultimately want to be?

MM: Yes, good question and something that we constantly ask ourselves. What we’ve looked at is actually setting up hubs, so we have hubs in the key locations where we have the majority of our hotels coming up. So Phra Khanong in Bangkok is the head office and that’s the first hub.

We also have a hub in Brisbane as we’re soon to have the Avani brand in Australia, and we have another hub in Dubai that looks after the Middle East.

Then about two and a half years ago we started to grow in Africa with the Avani brand, and we also took over the old Livingston in Zambia by Victoria Falls and turned it into an Anantara. So now we have Johannesburg as our hub there.

In Europe, we use Lisbon as a hub because we have the Tivoli hotels.

And in Brazil we use Sao Paulo. We really believe in local knowledge and you need the local experience and local expertise.

HOTELS: Tivoli was a big acquisition for Minor. Is the company looking to do more deals like that? 

MM: We are looking to do some more. Oaks is actually an acquisition from about seven years ago and was originally about 40 hotels when we bought it. The plan for the next five years is actually to add another 100 hotels to the portfolio.

We see the same happening with, particularly the Anantara brand, as well as the Avani brand growing and Tivoli growing quite significantly. There is also the potential for another brand that maybe we can purchase. So it’s a combination of all, really.

HOTELS: Minor has three hotels in China and you’ve also just opened another in the Guizhou Province in the country’s central southern region. What’s the overall game plan for China?

MM: China’s still very much an expansion opportunity for us. We’re well known there as a resort brand.

HOTELS: Where else is Minor looking to expand geographically?

MM: We still see potential in Asia, lots of opportunities. We’re going into Korea, we see opportunities in Myanmar and we’re looking to develop now in Spain, southern Europe and other opportunities in Europe. Having a hub Brazil, we plan to develop the Tivoli brand and also bring Anantara into South America and hopefully the Americas.   Having people on the ground makes a big difference in terms of us being able to pitch for more opportunities in those areas.

HOTELS: Any plans for the U.S.?

MM: Yes, we would like to. About three years ago we had a possible opportunity which didn’t come off. But we definitely would like to — and we have that foothold now where we can easily go from Brazil to get to the U.S. and look at opportunities.

HOTELS: What have been the biggest challenges? What’s hindering growth potential and what are some of the hurdles Minor faces? 

MM: One of the challenges that we see is growing our brand awareness. We’re very well known in Asia and the Middle East and by key, upscale travel agencies, and partners in the U.S. and Europe. Now we need to use all the channels – PR, marketing, social media – to try and accelerate that as quickly as we can.

HOTELS: Any other new projects on the horizon?           

MM: We’re moving into residences, which is a very exciting area. We’ve developed 15 very exclusive residences, which range from two bedrooms to nine bedrooms, at the Anantara Layan Phuket Resort in Thailand. We’ve sold about half of them as they’re very extreme – US$2 million to US$15 million – in terms of pricing. This is a whole new area for us, which provides the opportunity to target a completely different guest and bring them into Anantara. We’re going to do similar projects, one in Sri Lanka at the new Anantara Peace Haven Tangalle Resort, and we see a lot of potential for this in the future.

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