Sunway to draw more visitors with new attraction
Tuesday, 29 September 2015
Sunway Lagoon theme park is expected to attract two million visitors next year with the opening of an RM100mil Nickelodeon attraction scheduled for the last quarter of this year. The Sunway Group will not only be adding more hotel rooms in the vicinity of Sunway Lagoon but also expanding the Sunway Pyramid mall with an additional 100,000 sq ft of space for an investment of RM10mil under its phase 3 extension.
PETALING JAYA: Sunway Group expects its prized Sunway Lagoon theme park to attract two million visitors next year with the opening of an RM100mil Nickelodeon attraction scheduled for the last quarter of this year.
Sunway Lagoon, which has been a huge driver for the group and its hotel and shopping centre around the theme park, is estimated to attract 1.5 million visitors this year.
The success of Sunway Lagoon has seen not only the size and number of attractions at the theme park increase over the years, but has also allowed the group to capitalise on its accomplishments.
To meet the additional number of visitors, the Sunway Group will be launching a 401-room hotel to complement its existing 550-room Sunway Pyramid Tower East Hotel.
Sunway Pyramid Tower West would cost RM300mil, said Sunway Shopping Malls & Theme Parks (which is part of the Sunway Group) chief executive officer H.C. Chan in an interview with StarBiz. Both will be four-star hotels.
“The new hotel is part of the group’s asset-enhancement programme,” said Chan.
Currently, Pyramid Tower East and the adjacent Sunway Resort Hotel & Spa have a total of 1,250 rooms. The completion of the new hotel by the end of this year will give the group a total of 1,700 rooms.
On the oversupply of hotel rooms in the Klang Valley, Chan said the additional 400 rooms would be “easily absorbed”.
He said the additional rooms would “fit into the group’s plan for the hotel business to leverage on the Sunway Lagoon theme park”.
The group will not only be adding more hotel rooms in the vicinity of Sunway Lagoon but also expanding the Sunway Pyramid mall with an additional 100,000 sq ft of space for an investment of RM10mil under its phase 3 extension, said Chan.
He said phase 4 would see an additional 500,000 sq ft of net lettable area (NLA), for an investment of RM500mil.
The Sphinx-head Pyramid mall currently has NLA of 1.6 million sq ft and is the group’s key earnings driver, said AllianceDBS Research in an August report.
The group has injected Sunway Pyramid and Sunway Carnival into Sunway Real Estate Investment Trust (Sunway REIT).
Although Sunway REIT has a diversified portfolio of 14 assets, it derives 60% of its income from the Egyptian-themed mall.
