Tune Hotels.com, the limited service hotel brand providing a “5-star sleeping experience at a 1-star price” has officially launched its first 2 regional hotels outside Malaysia i.e. Tune Hotels.com – Kuta and Tune Hotels.com – Double Six, Legian in Bali, Indonesia.
The 139-room Tune Hotels.com – Kuta, soft-launched on 6 November 2009, is located on Jalan Kahyangan Suci (Off Jalan Pantai Kuta), 6 minutes walk from Kuta Beach and within the main shopping and dining area near Kuta Square in Jalan Pantai Kuta. The 170-room Tune Hotels.com – Double Six, Legian, soft-launched on 15 December 2009, is located in Jalan Arjuna (Off Jalan Double Six), 3 minutes walk from Legian beach and close to the shopping, dining and clubbing areas of Jalan Legian and Jalan Double Six.
The two Indonesian hotels join five other operational Tune Hotels.com locations in Malaysia i.e. Penang, Kota Kinabalu, Kuching, Kuala Lumpur and KLIA-LCCT Airport. Tune Hotels.com – Kuta and Tune Hotels.com – Double Six, Legian are the first of a planned 24 Tune Hotels.com hotels in Indonesia, to be located in cities such as Jakarta, Bandung, Surabaya, Yogyakarta, Batam and Medan.
Similar to low-cost carrier airlines, Tune Hotels.com employs a self-service online booking system that encourages guests to book as far in advance as possible on www.tunehotels.com to enjoy exceptionally low prices. Tune Hotels.com’s rates are kept low by employing a ‘limited service’ concept where underutilised hotel-operated facilities like swimming pools and gyms are removed and cost savings are passed on to the guest.
All Tune Hotels.com hotels feature space-efficient, streamlined rooms focusing on high-quality basics: 5-star beds and powerful hot showers. Though minimally priced, the strategically located hotels still provide daily housekeeping services, electronic keycard access into rooms, 24-hour CCTV and manned security, and no access into the main lobby without a keycard past midnight.
Explains Sendjaja Widjaja, Country CEO of Tune Hotels.com Indonesia, “Our guests are savvy, active travelers who are out and about for most of the day; either enjoying leisure attractions or conducting business outside the hotel. They appreciate being able to spend less on a room they will only really spend a few hours in, while still having peace of mind that they’ll be getting a good, safe night’s sleep at the end of a full day. Our model is to have guests spend less within the hotel itself, leaving more spending power to be activated within the local business eco-system”.
Sendjaja continued, “We begin supporting local businesses even within the hotel premises itself. Part of the way we are able to provide a 5-star sleeping experience at a 1-star price, is to operate on a ‘shopping mall’ concept i.e. rather than incurring extra overheads pretending we know how to run a hotel-operated restaurant, 24-hour convenience store or a spa for example, we instead lease out retail space to established brands who wish to access our high-volume guest base. Here in Tune Hotels.com, we allow established local brands Es Teler 77 (local café), Mini Mart (24-hour convenience store) and Wellbeing Spa (spa services), to provide valuable supporting services to our guests, so that we can focus on what we know best – selling clean, comfortable rooms via www.tunehotels.com.”
Through Tune Hotels.com’s ‘Less Waste, More Earth’ pay-as-you-use system of add-ons for air-conditioning, laundered towels and other energy-consuming facilities and amenities, Tune Hotels.com aims to help guests conserve both their funds as well as the earth’s resources.
Optional air-conditioning is programmed into guest keycards via affordably priced ‘credit units’ of 12 hours and 24 hours. Ceiling fans are a standard feature in all Tune Hotels.com rooms for guests who prefer to consume even less power. Each room is only issued one keycard with power access to ensure that power in the room is not activated when the guest is out, hallway air-conditioners are set on a timer system so they turn on in alternate sequence to conserve energy and energy-efficient bulbs are used in the properties as much as possible. Tune Hotels.com also reduces water consumption and the flow of laundry effluents into the environment by allowing guests staying for more than one night to choose to have their bed linens changed on alternate days instead of daily.
“Guests find the small charges for our optional add-ons very reasonable, yet as with everything, when you are fully aware of what a resource costs you, you tend to be more careful with how you use it,” said Sendjaja. Tune Hotel.com’s endorsement of less wasteful, more resource-optimising lifestyles has gained nods of approval from a growing number of conscientious consumers. Guest Mrs. V.V. Palarca from the Philippines said, “I liked the hotel’s concern for energy conservation. To cut down on energy costs, guests pay for the amount of air-conditioning used. Since we were out most of the time, our pre-paid 12-hour AC lasted us our whole 3 night’s stay!”
Since the brand was first launched in Kuala Lumpur in 2007, more than 500,000 guests have stayed at a Tune Hotels.com and it was recently named as one of ‘7 Compact Hotels Big on Style’ in a global list by Fast Company, a publication that focuses on innovative companies sparking change in the marketplace.
Explaining why Indonesia was chosen as the location of Tune Hotels.com’s first regional hotels, Mark Lankester, Group CEO for Tune Hotels.com said, “We listen to our guests very carefully and Bali is a destination that our current guests have voted in favour of having a Tune Hotels.com presence. We greatly appreciate what Bali has accomplished over the years as a global destination and were delighted that we were in a position to enter the market. An investment in developing hotels is never one to be made with a short-term view and whilst the world may be in somewhat troubled times, we have a great deal of faith in the people of Bali and are in it for the long term”.
Lankester continued, said, “Bali’s appeal lies in its unique religious, social and cultural heritage, as well as its extraordinary people. Because we strive to remain locally relevant in each and every community that we’re in, it is important to us that we do everything we can to fit in with the cultural sensitivities of ‘the Balinese experience’. In deference to Bali’s unique culture, we have taken care to incorporate Balinese elements into our building designs and staff processes. Ultimately, we believe by establishing our presence in Bali, we will be providing an affordable, reliable hospitality product that will encourage more people to experience the richness of Balinese traditions for themselves.”
Despite the challenging economic environment, Tune Hotels.com has not slowed down its aggressive regional expansion plans – 100 hotels throughout Asia in the next 3-5 years. After Kuta and Double Six, Legian in Bali, Indonesia, more hotels will follow regionally as the brand expands via franchising and joint-venture partnerships in other parts of Indonesia, Thailand, India and China.
Explained Lankester, “We have entered into a strategic partnership with the real estate and infrastructure investment group Apodis Hospitality, to develop and operate 20 Tune Hotels.com hotels across India by 2012. Under the terms of the Tune Hotels.com – Apodis Hospitality partnership, 5 Tune Hotels.com hotels are targeted to be operational in India by 2010 with staggered roll-out of the subsequent 15 hotels to be completed by 2012.
Lankester continued, “More recently, we signed a strategic partnership agreement with Evolution Capital Public Company Limited, a real estate investment advisory firm listed on the Stock Exchange of Thailand, to franchise a roll-out of 44 Tune Hotels.com hotels across Thailand, China, Bangladesh, the Philippines, and Indonesia. Under the terms of the strategic partnership, the first 24 Tune Hotels.com hotels, likely beginning with a hotel in Phuket, are targeted to be in development by early 2010 and operational by 2012 with staggered roll-out of the subsequent 20 hotels to be completed by 2013.”
For more information and bookings visit www.tunehotels.com.
