B is for business hotel

By Zsarlene B. Chua

ASIDE FROMthe multitude of restaurants, bars and other entertainment places, the Scouts area of Quezon city (which includes the streets of Tomas Morato and Timog) is now home to a variety of mid-scale and boutique hotels and one of the newest entries is the second B Hotel from the Bellevue Hotels and Resorts group.

Located on Scout Rallos St., the mid-scale 111-room hotel, while unassuming at first glance with its simple rectangular facade, is a feast for the eyes as it boasts of an industrial— “brutalism” — design with a little steampunk on the side.

The walls are bare, accented by wood, hanging lights and a touch of red to break the monochrome, and large windows to let the light in. The elevator and the hallways leading to the guest rooms feature gears, pipes and gauges, for a touch of steampunk, which, in a word, is charming.

The rooms, similarly, have bare walls accented by wood tones broken by a touch of red — either a seat, a carpet or a pillow.

“We wanted to design a hotel that would look five star but using materials and design… to keep the costs lower… to build a more efficient hotel,” Ryan Chan, managing director of B Hotel, told ����ý during an overnight stay in September.

The industrial design of the hotel is a first for the business hotel brand and was suggested by the hotel’s architect, Edward Co Tan, following his principle of “Structure as Architecture,” said Mr. Chan.

What resulted was a “talking piece,” according to Mr. Chan, as they “wanted to go a little bit further and make [the Quezon city branch] distinct.”

The first B Hotel, which opened in the Madrigal Business Park in Alabang, Muntinlupa City in 2010, features a more contemporary look though the same color scheme was used.

Mr. Chan said that the main focus for the business hotel is “on the room and on the bed” because one goes to a hotel for a “good night’s sleep.”

The hotel — its grand opening will be this month — will have four dining outlets including a pastry corner, a lobby café and a mezzanine bar (modeled after the speakeasies of Prohibition Era United States) all located at the lobby, and a poolside bar at the third floor. There are provisions for other outlets to set up shop at the hotel’s ground floor.

EXPANSION
Other B Hotels and Bellevue properties will soon rise, while one is up for expansion, said Dustin Chan, managing director of Bellevue Hotels and Resorts, during a media trip to the Bellevue Resort in Bohol last month.

The resort will be adding 60 villas which Mr. Chan described as “higher-end rooms,” with rates at around $100,000, all in preparation for the opening of the new 220-hectare Panglao airport which is slated to open in 2017.

Meanwhile, B Hotel, according to Ryan Chan, will have three more properties as the group is set to open hotels in General Santos City, Sta. Rosa in Laguna, and Cagayan de Oro in the next few years.

The group has also set its sight on Myanmar as the new site for one of the B brand hotels, while hotels under the Bellevue brand are being planned in Baguio and Palawan.

“As a hotel group, we don’t just look at Manila but we set our eyes on other emerging markets and the top pick for emerging markets would be Myanmar because, obviously, it just opened and it needs a lot of hotels,” Mr. Chan said before adding they are looking at putting up the hotel in either Bagan city or Yangon within the next five years.

“We want to bring the Filipino B Hotel touch there,” he said.

“Thinking globally, I want B Hotel to be the first Filipino four-star hotel group in Asia that’s successful,” he added.

B Hotel Quezon city is located at 14 Scout Rallos St., Barangay Laging Handa, Quezon City. For more information, visit www.thebellevue.com, call 990-5000 or e-mail [email protected].