DoubleDragon opens Hotel101 global sales HQ in Singapore, reveals plan to be in 25 countries by 2026

DoubleDragon [DD 7.00, down 0.7%; 90% avgVol] [link], Injap Sia’s property development arm, disclosed that it opened its Global Corporate Office and Global Sales Hub for DD’s Hotel101 brand in Singapore. The first three international Hotel101 locations will be in Hokkaido, Madrid, and California. The press release says that this “unique” business model “can be planted in over 100 countries”, but only provides a timeframe for Hotel101’s expansion into the first 25 countries in this total addressable market. DD says that, by 2026, it will have expanded into the following 25 countries: target for “near term” expansion into these countries: Philippines, Japan, Spain, USA, United Kingdom, UAE, India, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Cambodia, Bangladesh, Mexico, South Korea, Australia, Canada, Switzerland, Turkey, Italy, Germany, France, and China.

MB bottom-line: As much as my mind is drawn to pick apart the press release, like with the wording that the business model “can” be applied to 100 countries (very few business models can’t), or by DD’s inclusion of the Philippines as one of the 25 countries as part of its international expansion roadmap (it’s already here, and we’re not international), I still can’t shake the thought that this could be something. Sure, on the one hand, there’s a large group of traveling Filipinos who are wealthy and who love to spend copiously on foreign hotels and experiences who are probably not all that interested in the familiar taste of Filipino coffee and AI-designed banig mats. But on the other, there’s an even larger crowd of cost-conscious travelers who do want to see the sights but do so on a budget, and for those travelers, perhaps Hotel101 will be a marriage of convenience that is hard to resist. Again, I don’t know. I don’t have a great feel for this, and I don’t have access to the feasibility studies that DD has done. But DD is clearly hyped about the concept. They’re pushing hard for Hotel101 to be the defining brand of DD’s empire.

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