The new Stanley Hotel in Port Moresby will operate on a scale not seen before in Papua New Guinea, General Manager Geoff Haigh tells Business Advantage PNG. He says once all stages of the project are completed customers will not have to leave.

A room in the Stanley Hotel. Source: Stanley Hotel

‘The theory here is to build a hotel inside its own little city,’ says Haigh. ‘The owners first built the Vision City shopping centre. Stage two is the hotel. Stage three will be an apartment block and stage four will be an office tower.’

Haigh says a lot of visitors to Port Moresby are ‘nervous about driving or going anywhere’. The aim is to provide a service so comprehensive they will have no need to leave.

‘You can basically stay here, you can have a swim, you can go to the shops, you can go to a Korean restaurant, you can go to a night club and you can have an office.

‘You can live, work play and do everything without leaving the city. If you think of it as a gated community that is really what it is.

‘The major market here is really government and corporate.’

‘The owners took that approach because there are enough people coming here who are afraid of what the circumstances might be. Whether or not that is true is irrelevant. The point is that a lot of people come who are nervous.’

Business travellers

The Stanley Hotel. Source: Stanley Hotel.

The Stanley cost K500 million to build. It will have 34 expats and 550 PNG nationals on staff. The initial opening date was last January, but it is now expected to open in July.

Haigh says the target market will be mainly expatriates and business travellers. ‘The tourism market is quite small: the yearly average is between 10,000 and 20,000 room nights. I would need those numbers nearly every month to make it worthwhile.

‘The major market here is really government and corporate. The hotel has been built around that expat factor and trying to keep them here.’

The centrepiece of the hotel will be the function space, claims Haigh. He says there will be 3500 square metres of function space and a 1600 square metre ballroom.

‘Now we can actually talk to organisations and associations that have big conferences and try to attract them here.’

‘The breakout rooms’ sizes are 280 square metres, which can be broken out into smaller rooms. The outdoor balcony area will be over 400 square metres.

‘I could do a plenary for a thousand, with a huge exhibition at the same time. I could do cocktails for 3,000, or a sit down dinner for 1,200, with a stage and dance floor. There are mobile bars and a 540 square metre kitchen with the right appliances to turn things around in half an hour.

‘It is really big; everything is huge. It would not be out of place in Beijing, or Shanghai, or Sydney.’

Competitive conditions

Haigh believes the effect of the hotel on competitive conditions will not be straightforward. ‘I am hoping—because we now have a function space that the country has never had before—we can attract conferences and meetings that could never have been held in the past.’

Haigh says his aim is to ‘take what we can and look after it better’.

Haigh says that this would benefit the entire market. ‘I couldn’t take a conference for 800 people and then take them all in our hotel. So they have got to be farmed out somewhere. That means the hotels that are closest will certainly win.

Stanley Hotel room. Source: Stanley Hotel.

‘Now we can actually talk to organisations and associations that have big conferences and try to attract them here. Whereas before they would do it in Fiji, or Australia, or New Zealand.’

Brand recognition

The opening of The Stanley may well trigger some intense competition. Haigh says his aim is to ‘take what we can and look after it better’. He says he wants to ‘make it easier for customers, provide a better service and better quality product.’

‘If you just wait for people to turn up you are waiting a long time.’

One challenge Haigh faces is to establish brand recognition. ‘When people look to book a room the first time they will always buy a brand. If you are going to Ethiopia, or Middle China, you are not going to stay at a Stanley, you are going to stay at the Hilton, or the Marriott, because you know what that brand is. That is always a threat.’

Haigh says he is consequently spending heavily on advertising to develop the brand. ‘I realise it is going to take a long time to do that but if you don’t do it the hotel will fail. If you just wait for people to turn up you are waiting a long time.’