Take, for example, its emerging flex hybrid concept for its serviced residences. Rather than creating a separate brand for every typology, Gow said Ascott adapts its existing brands across a range of property types to cater to different travel purposes and lengths of stay.
The flex hotel-in-residence model enables Ascott to cater to varying lengths of stays and different guest profiles with the convenience of services, facilities and amenities of a hotel. Room options range from studio apartments, penthouse suites to connecting and dual-key units.
“During good times, we can lean a lot more to the shorter stay segment, where we can yield up profits for owners,” Goh explained. “During leaner times, like for instance during COVID, we’ll lean into the longest stay segment. During COVID, we noticed that in our service apartment product were maintaining a 40% to 50% occupancy, which was more than enough to pay for bills and to be able to generate a little bit of profit for the owner. So, that is actually a very attractive proposition to owners to say that they can have a hybrid model. They can flex between long and short. They can decide where in the spectrum they want to play depending on the economic cycles.”
Ascott, big picture
Looking more broadly at new opportunities, Goh said Ascott’s growth is anchored in Asia’s dynamic markets, these being Southeast Asia, alongside India and China. Currently, The Ascott lodging portfolio exceeds 1,000 properties across operational and pipeline assets.
Southeast Asia contributes over 30% of Ascott’s total revenue and accounted for more than half of Ascott’s global signings last year.
India, on the other hand, is a high-potential frontier for Ascott, according to Goh, due to increasing urbanization, a growing middle class, and an appetite for global hospitality standards. “We are actively expanding our footprint, starting with strategic gateway cities,” he said. “We have a target to double our portfolio in India to 12,000 units by 2028, up from about 5,500 units at the end of 2024.”
Ascott plans to achieve a 20% annual growth rate over the next five years in the Middle East, Africa, and Turkey. The company aims to steadily grow its regional presence toward 15,000 units in operation or under development by 2030, leveraging its flexible living portfolio and experience-led hospitality models. Strategic growth in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates anchors Ascott’s expansion plans. In Saudi Arabia, the company intends scaling operations across Riyadh, Jeddah, Makkah, Madinah and key secondary cities.
Looking at China, Goh said they used to only have maybe about 10 properties there in 2008 versus some 230 today in to city with robust domestic demand. “We continue tapping into its domestic travel momentum through management and franchise partnerships, such as our collaboration with Jin Jiang Hotels to scale brands like Quest,” Goh said.
He also pointed to developing countries like Indonesia, Vietnam and Philippines, where there has been a lot of construction and Ascott has been more management contracts in the last two or three years.
“What we are focusing on a lot more is asset-light growth through management contracts and franchises,” Goh said. “We’ve been very focused on building distribution, whether it’s a loyalty program or direct distribution with our corporate clients.
“We are very focused on operational efficiency, and we are also moving a lot into the franchise space,” Goh continued. “Quest is one of our bigger franchise operations down in Australia, with Australia and New Zealand close to 200 properties. We are also signing franchise contracts across Singapore, Europe and other countries like Thailand and Malaysia. So, I do see ourselves doing a lot more in this space, and we’re also going into new product groups, for instance, branded residences and resorts typologies. Whether it’s a business park or a city, our brands can actually traverse all these different locations.”
Franchise growth
The shift to franchise again is an adaptation for The Ascott has Gow said owners become more sophisticated and want to self-operate.
“In Asia, a lot of hotel companies are actually more doing management contracts,” Gow added. “But I think slowly and surely, the shift of mindset is to do more franchises as owners want to do more themselves. It is becoming more and more apparent.”
Their collaboration with Jin Jiang Hotels in China is a prime example – leveraging franchise-ready infrastructure, scale and local expertise, and Ascott’s experience in operating international-class serviced residences to accelerate franchise-led growth.
Goh said Ascott is also making good progress with franchising the Citadines brand in China, supporting its ambitions to scale quickly across tiered cities.
He added that in Europe, a mature franchising market, Ascott is seeing strong interest from partners keen to work with their brands.
Co-living, branded resi
The Ascott is also active in the co-living space with its lyf brand, the first which opened in Singapore in 2019 and today has about 50 properties either open or in the pipeline in cities like Paris, Sydney, Melbourne, Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok, according to Goh.
Ascott wants to grow co-living to 150 properties by 2029, Goh added, and sees the concept growing in popularity with next-gen travelers.
With a tagline “experiential-led social living,” Ascott is creating more of a retail product, looking at it from a rent per square meter perspective, Goh said. Self-contained rooms are 15-16 square meters and much larger social spaces include co-working, social kitchens and communal interaction with more guests staying on property.
“From a revenue stream perspective, we get high rate per square meter, but we also get ancillary income for all the other activities that we’re organizing,” Goh said. “I see that as a win- win product. It is attractive for the guests and, on the other hand, it’s actually very profitable for the owner.”
The other segment Goh talked about was branded residential, “a reflection of what the market demands,” he said.
“We are seeing more and more signings in this area. We feel that our brand has good traction with many markets that we have been in for 40 years,” Goh said. “Our expertise in design and service delivery is also valued by the market. So, many owners with whom we have a management contract with are also coming to us to say, ‘can we do the brand and residence together with you?’”
Goh said he sees a lot of residential traction in Asian especially, Malaysia, Vietnam, Singapore, Philippines and the like.
By Jeffrey Weinstein
