The single biggest
determinant to success in this industry, and I believe it’s completely overlooked
by most owners and
operators, is: What is your built up square footage in
the property?

It really boiled down to the concept, we had to tell the consultants: look,
these are the things that we want.

creating the melody
Another challenge for the first location was renovating of a 25 year old building to fit the Tune specifications. For the design and construction phases, maximising the use of space was the prime objective. The site had previously been a 103 room hotel, albeit with “wasted space” such as a large lobby and ballroom. By removing these, replacing the series of cleaning rooms on each floor with one central
room, and reconfiguring the layout, an additional 68 rooms were added to the hotel.

There were two problems in adding in the extra rooms, from a renovations perspective, explains Salim. The first was that the plans for the existing structure did not always match the actual building, so “When we knocked down walls we’d find columns that, according our documentation, didn’t exist.” Thus, the plans had to constantly be updated, with rooms shifted about or re-sized. The second issue was the loading on the structure due to the additional walls and plumbing. Lightweight blocks and a lightweight water tank were used in construction to maintain the structural integrity of the building while still allowing the addition of extra bathrooms and dividers for the new rooms.



on-line systems
One of the key factors to running the hotel is the webbased booking system. As guests have to pre-book and pre-pay for all rooms and amenities over the internet, a central server in Tune head office replaces the complicated booking and billing systems and procedures that are found in many other hotels. “When guest arrive,” says Melka, “all we have at reception is a laptop and a cardkey”.

reacting to the consumer
Since opening in April 2007, the first Tune hotel KL has been operating at 91 percent occupancy, with an average room rate of MYR50, according to Melka. This initial period is being used to test the hotel systems and gauge customer reaction to the hotel. “We carefully track complaints feedback forms, and use this to improve our offering” Melka explains. For example, when designing the hotel flooring, Tune decided on a varnished concrete finish, hoping to achieve an “industrial chic” appearance reminiscent of boutique hotels in cities like New York. However, says Melka, this has not been a successful strategy, “80 percent of our complaints were related to our flooring, people felt it looked unfinished”. It really boiled down to
the concept, we had to tell the consultants: look, these are the things that
we want.

the hospitality world according to Tune
Tune hotel’s approach seems to turn most standard practice in Asia on its head. Director Dennis Melka shares some of the precepts that shape how they do business.

“The customer is not too fussed about the room size, so we have rooms that go down as small as nine or ten square meters.”

“I’m amazed at the market, people would prefer to drop hundreds of millions of dollars to chase five percent yields on a five star hotel rather than opening a Holiday Express or an Ibis where the yield is much higher.”

“You check into a hotel late you take a quick shower and you sleep, then you wake up take another shower and you get out. Showers and beds are the two most important things to a traveller.”

“We would rather someone else take the benefits from the food & beverage, we don’t want to worry about it. At the end of the day, there are a lot of food options in Asia, so we think the most important thing is giving customers a good room.”

“We’re bringing another class of real estate to South East Asia, which is limited service, and it doesn’t really exist right now. We’ll give you a great bed, a great shower and a great location at an unbeatable price. That’s our business model.”

Reacting to the customer complaints, Tune are now installing wood laminate flooring and tiling in the Kuala Lumpur flagship hotel, and in all new developments.
Also, notes Melka, “The remaining 20 percent of complaints are related to the lack of a TV in the room”, so Tune are currently looking at installing LCD TV’s, under a
charge per use basis, of course.

the right product?
With ASEAN capitals heading towards open skies policies, cheap air travel will open up hospitality markets for millions of tourists who were previously unable to holiday abroad. Air Asia are projected to carry 50 mil passengers per year by 2015.
In line with this projection, Tune are rapidly expanding, with six developments currently underway, including “one in Kuala Lumpur International Airport, one in Kota Kinabulu and another in Penang with over 300 rooms”, says Melka. Providing that the market reaction is good, Tune will be looking to launch another 15 developments “in a variety of destinations including Lankawi, Thailand, Bali and Jakarta”.

Melka’s stresses that Tune is aiming to deliver a mass market product, the hotel equivalent of McDonald’s, “We want to eliminate any of the discretion in design or features for any of these hotels, we want to make it very cookie cutter.” This strategy will rely heaving on achieving the right focus, breaking with the traditional way of doing things, and offering Asian consumers the product they want. As Melka concludes, “Most of it was done inhouse because, we found, we’re trying to break the mold on how this is done, if you don’t do it yourself it’s hard to get the right product.” RFP

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