Discovery Suites is set to launch two new and exciting properties in 2014, the Discovery Primea in Makati City and the Club Paradise in Coron, Palawan.
In a media interview with ABS-CBN News, Discovery general manager David Pardo de Ayala talks about the "pure luxury" their new properties have to offer to customers this year.
The Discovery Primea
The Discovery Primea is a 68-storey tower along Ayala Avenue in Makati with 141 suites.
“We have 13 rooms per floor and around 141 rooms in the property, except in the 14th and 15th floor where there are only 11 rooms. These are duplex units with 220 square meters,” he said.
“[The difference is in] the kind of rooms and the size of the rooms,” he added. “We’re going to have the single fastest Wi-Fi access in all of Makati… We’re going to have Internet in the rooms and public areas.”
Each room offers 10 mbps of free Internet access, LED televisions in the bedroom (46 inches) and the bathroom (19 inches), a fully-furnished kitchen with a microwave and coffee machine, iPod and iPad docks and washers and dryers.
Like most hotels, the property also has a 24-hour room service, a salon, business center, chapel, gym, limousine service, pool bar, spa, swimming pool and a wellness clinic.
“We want to capture the long-stay market,” Pardo de Ayala explained. “But we also have rooms for the transient market, or those who will only stay for two or three nights.”
Discovery Primea’s food and beverage concepts include the all-day dining outlet Tapenade, the Lobby Lounge, the modern European restaurant 16th Floor, the Garden Bar and the exclusive Club Lounge. The property also offers fine-crafted cigars, single-malt whiskies, cognac, wine and champagne at a venue called 1824.
Function rooms are also available for meetings, parties and other events.
“I was a chef for 20 years so it’s very close to my heart,” Pardo de Ayala said, referring to Discovery Primea’s F&B concepts. “These are going to be something different, something original, something we feel we don’t have yet in Manila.”
Pardo de Ayala said they are hoping to launch Discovery Primea in the second quarter of 2014, although he was quick to admit that this is “an ambitious project.”
“This date is a moving target… We are aiming for second quarter of this year, but it’s probably going to be later than that,” he said. “But we’ll absolutely open within the year.”
The new Club Paradise
The other property slated for a 2014 launch is Club Paradise resort in Coron, Palawan which was acquired by Discovery last year.
The 25-year-old resort continues to undergo renovations with the addition of rooms and better, more updated facilities.
“If everything will go into plan, we’ll open at the last quarter of this year. It’s going to be an 18-month renovation. But of course it’s going to be a phase-by-phase renovation so it’s business as usual. We will not close the place because we have prior reservations already,” said Club Paradise resort manager Joegil Escobar said.
Escobar assured Club Paradise’s customers that there will be “no drastic changes” in the resort, saying that the property will maintain its old charm.
He added that majority of the resort’s staff were retained. “The values are already there, we just had to align them with Discovery,” he said.
Currently, Club Paradise attracts mostly foreigners since the property was previously managed by a German company, according to Escobar.
He hopes that more Filipinos will start visiting the property once the renovations are completed.
“We really have a market for Europeans, particularly for Germans and the French. We also have Filipino balikbayans. We want to open the resort to more clients to experience the new Club Paradise,” he said.--Source: ABS-CBN News