URA releases the first of four sites on reserve list to meet increased demand
A New hotel development is being planned beside Ikea along Alexandra Road, as part of the Government’s efforts to meet greater demand for hotel rooms in Singapore in the coming years.
Yesterday, the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) released the detailed sale conditions for a reserve site at the corner of Alexandra Road and Jalan Bukit Merah.
This 0.79ha site, with a maximum permissible gross floor area of 22,249 sq m, is the first of four new hotel sites to be released for application by December.
The site sits just next to furniture mall Ikea and opposite the popular Queensway Shopping Centre (see map).
In a statement, the URA described it as sitting on a “prominent location” near two MRT stations and a short distance away from attractions like Mount Faber, VivoCity and Sentosa.
The statutory board is now calling for developers interested in buying the site to apply for it to be put up for tender. The other three hotel sites on the reserve list for the second half of 2007 are at Jalan Besar/ Sturdee Road, Race Course Road/Bukit Timah Road and Bernam Street/Tanjong Pagar Road.
In a bid to deal with the anticipated hotel room crunch, other options being considered by the Government include a novel idea to refurbish existing cruise ships to create hotels on water.
With Singapore gearing up to welcome a whopping 17 million tourists by 2015, “floating” hotels could be built by retrofitting existing cruise ships from a charter company, to be moored off either Labrador Park or Changi, according to a report published by The Business Times yesterday.
During the first half of this year, 4.9 million tourists came to Singapore, spending some $6.4 billion. That led to hotels hitting an average occupancy rate of 86 per cent, with average room rates moving past the $200-per-night mark for the first time.
Last month, the Singapore Tourism Board said it was working with the URA to monitor the supply of hotel rooms here.
No comments:
Post a Comment