LIVE Manchising Big Topic at Budget & Economy Hotels Conference

thephuketinsider is at the Budget & Economy Hotels Asia 2009 Conference in Singapore. The first day's keynote speech featured ACCOR Chairmon and CEO Asia Pacific who spoke at length on the expansion of the brands IBIS economy tier brand. While the chain has taken a financial interest in some strategic projects he viewed that in markets such as China which had considerable scale that the brand would be looking at selected 'manchising.' (Editor for those new to the term this is essentially a franchise which has an element or link to some degree of management. And that owners wants the ability to manage their own product and profit and loss statement but that under the new scheme the General Manager of the property would be supervised by ACCOR directly.
Later in the day Tom Monahan Executive Vice President of Wyndham which includes Ramada, Super 8 and Howard Johnson's observed that 'manchising' was logical in the budget and economy segment as it was often too expensive for global chains to provide fulltime managers and that the hybrid model gave operators some sort of control on product standards and corporate services without the cost burden which was essentially a win win proposition for owners and operators.