Budget business hotel group Toyoko Inn hope to draw East Asian businesspeople and travellers to Phnom Penh

The Toyoko Inn, which is a joint venture between the Overseas Cambodia Investment Corporation (OCIC) and a Japanese budget, business hotel chain, is slated to open in May 2015. OCIC project manager Touch Samnang said that construction of the Toyoko Inn has reached 23 floors since building started on December 12, 2012. More than 300 rooms are now being outfitted.

Meanwhile, he said, the total cost for the investment in land and construction totalled some $14 million, excluding hotel fittings. Toyoko Inn Co Ltd was established in 1986, and the name of the company is a combination of the names of the Japanese neighbouring cities Tokyo and Yokohama. From the 1990s onwards the company has expanded rapidly, though the majority of its branches are in Japan.

“We expect that this hotel will be successful due to the location and the surrounding environment, plus the fact that the Toyoko Inn group is known as the No 1 hotel chain in Japan,” said Samnang.

Built on 1,223 square metres of land and located on the road to Diamond Island (Koh Pich), the location is good for guests. Luu Meng, president of the Cambodia Hotel Association, said so far this year up to six hotels had been approved, with up to seven due to open later this year.

He added that the association was still waiting for Toyoko Inn to formally apply to the association.

Ho Vandy, co-chair of the Tourism Working Group at CATA, said there was a lack of a supply of three-star, budget business hotels during the high season from October to February.

“Toyoko Inn has invested here due to the political stability and growth in the tourism sector and associated services,” he added. Norimasa Nishida, president of Toyoko Inn, said during the groundbreaking ceremony at the end of 2012 that this was Toyoko Inn’s first venture in Cambodia. “I am running 240 hotels in Japan and also countries such as Korea and China, but this is the first time that I have run a business in Cambodia,” he said at the time.

Nishida added: “We are interested in Southeast Asia, and our company is interested in Cambodia.”

He added that his hotel chain was also interested in Cambodia due to the increasing numbers of foreign investors entering the market, a trend that is likely to continue, looking ahead to economic integration with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) next year.

“I hope that most of my guests come from East Asia,” said Nishida. “They will spend money in Cambodia, [and] we will construct more hotels in Siem Reap if business runs well.”