InterContinental Hotels to manage Holiday Inn Express Bukit Bintang hotel

KUALA LUMPUR (Jan 9): InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) will manage Kuala Lumpur’s first Holiday Inn Express to be built along Jalan Bukit Bintang.

The 200-room Holiday Inn Express Bukit Bintang hotel will be built by RB Capital Group’s subsidiary and slated to open in 2015.

In a joint statement issued by IHG and RB Capital, they said the hotel would be in one of KL’s busiest retail and entertainment belts. The site is across from iconic developments such as Lot 10, Pavilion Kuala Lumpur and Starhill Gallery, next to where RB Capital owns 33 Jalan Sultan Ismail, a 26-storey tower housing HSBC’s Malaysian headquarters.

Chief Executive for Asia, Middle East and Africa at IHG, Jan Smits said the Holiday Inn Express was a well-established brand that met the demand for an international standard hotel that offered convenience and value in great locations.

“The brand is growing strongly across the region, with a pipeline of over 50 hotels and more than 11,000 rooms in Asia Pacific alone,” he said.

Meanwhile, RB Capital Group CEO and founder Kishin R.K. said the Holiday Inn Express brand was well known by the rising number of mid-tier business and leisure travellers visiting this part of the world.

“With the soaring and steady growth we’ve seen in the tourism and hospitality sectors across Southeast Asia, we are certain there are opportunities for strong growth and development in this area. We see Kuala Lumpur as a particularly strong market, especially now that Malaysia has placed tourism high up on its policy agenda,” he said.

To recap, RB Capital Hotels is the hotel arm of RB Capital Group. Holiday Inn Express Bukit Bintang is the second Holiday Inn Express hotel that RB Capital Hotels is building in partnership with IHG.

The group is also building Holiday Inn Express Clarke Quay, the largest Holiday Inn Express hotel in Southeast Asia, which will open its doors in the first quarter of 2013.

RB Capital Group owns prominent office and retail developments with offices in Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong. Some of the group’s properties include Southeast Asia’s largest Holiday Inn Express opposite Clarke Quay; the EFG Bank Building opposite Singapore’s Parliament House; RB Capital Building at Raffles Place (formerly known as Royal Brothers Building) and 33 Jalan Sultan Ismail, which houses the HSBC headquarters in Malaysia.

Globally, there are currently 2,103 Holiday Inn Express hotels across major cities, with nearly 470 hotels under development.

In Asia Pacific, the brand is expanding rapidly from its current 31 hotels and will open new hotels in Singapore, India, Thailand and Indonesia within the next few years.