2 Tune Hotels Open in London

Tune Hotels is expanding its portfolio of properties in London with two new openings in Paddington and Kings Cross. The addition of these two hotels brings the brand’s presence in the British capital to four. This comes as the Olympic Games are just around the corner.

Tune Hotel Paddington is located just a five-minute walk from Paddington mainline train station. The property has 137 rooms and a coffee shop that offers a variety of light refreshments. Tune Hotel Kings Cross is situated on Gray’s Inn Road only 500 metres from the Kings Cross and St Pancras stations. The building is actually the former Swinton House. The hotel has 217 rooms, all with and without windows.

These openings follow the Tune Hotel Westminster winning the Certificate of Excellence Award from TripAdvisor for the second year in a row. The Sunday Times Travel Magazine also named the company’s Tune Hotel Liverpool Street ‘Best UK City Hotel’.

These recent openings are part of 30 properties that are being opened over the next year around the world. Tune Hotels chief executive Mark Lankester says more of their hotels are due to open in the UK, India, Australia and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). This will give their guests even more options for destinations to travel.

Tune Group, a lifestyle business conglomerate, owns and operates Tune Hotels, while the hotel brand is also a subsidiary of budget airline AirAsia. Earlier this week, a bigger share of Tune Hotels was purchased by investment firm Red Planet Hotels. The deal will see the company hold 16% of the budget hotel brand, making it one of the biggest franchises of the brand in the ASEAN.

Red Planet Hotels chief executive Tim Hansin, who worked alongside Saudi Prince Alwaleed (who owns Four Seasons) for eight years, has attributed the boom of budget hotels in the ASEAN to the increase of cheap flights and development of the middle-class in Asia. The low-cost carrier system allows them to capture the market and grab ahold of the demand its generating. Buying into Tune Hotels wasn’t their original plan, but it’s a total game changer for Red Planet Hotels. This is the fastest-growing global market for tourist arrivals, and it’s badly served in Asia.

In September, Red Planet Hotels will open a Tune Hotel on Sukhumvit Soi 14 with 130 rooms. Additionally, the company is investing up to US$70 million to establish eight budget properties in the Philippines to serve demand for affordable, quality accommodation facilities for tourists. By the end of the year, the company will have ten operating projects across Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines.

There are a total of 24 Tune Hotels with almost 4,000 rooms located around the world from Scotland to Saudi Arabia. The brand is expanding in the UK, Australia, India, Qatar and the UAE, which will add 6,000 more hotel rooms to its portfolio. In the Philippines, Red Planet Hotels is the franchisee of four Tune Hotels with a total of 700 rooms and 60 Filipino employees. After the opening of a further three Philippine hotels, the company will have about 1,100 rooms in the country.