Ryan (seated) and Patrick: Believers in emerging markets.

Before 2003, you’d have been hard-pressed to find a five-star hotel south of Makati. The realm of world-class accommodations stopped there, and perhaps stretched a bit toward the Bay Area, but beyond that, zilch.

That is, until brothers Patrick and Ryan Chan put up The Bellevue Manila, the only full service five-star hotel in Alabang. It’s an impressive structure, a stone’s throw away from the shopping malls and the local commercial district, and it’s become the place to escape, celebrate special occasions at, and chill after work hours in that neck of the woods.

“It was like baking a cake from scratch without any experience and without a recipe book,” Patrick Chan, general manager of The Bellevue Manila admits. “There was no comparative sources of data with regards to demand so it was a big risk coming to Alabang to be the first full service hotel. Without any international chain backing, it was also difficult to establish development standards and operating procedures since we had to develop it completely by ourselves.

Hiring good consultants and managers made it all happen for The Bellevue. A strong pre-opening team is absolutely essential.”

His brother Ryan, director of marketing communications, agrees with regard to selling the hotel, not only to internal clients, but to future customers as well. “(One of the) major challenges was that Alabang was an emerging market,” he says. “We had to do extra efforts in public relations and events to bring in the customer.

We were virtually unknown around the area. We had to show the features of our hotel so that the consumer can see first hand the five-star qualities of the hotel.”

Both only in their thirties—Patrick is 30 while Ryan is 34—the tandem nevertheless possesses many years of hotel experience, and are recognized in the HRM community. Patric is already president of the Philippine Hotel Federation, and director of the Hotel and Restaurant Association of the Philippines. And both have literally been exposed to the business since they were wee boys.

‘We love hotels’

Their mother, Debbie Chan, put up Tropicana in 1968. Their maternal grandfather, Joseph Yu, meanwhile, put up Copacobana in 1975. Both are still around in their original locations: Tropicana on Guerrero Street in Malate, Manila, and Copacabana on EDSA extension in Pasay City, but are now run by the brothers’ cousins.

“I grew up with the bellboys,” Ryan recalls. “I played with the housekeepers. I remember my lolo telling the hotel staff, ‘my grandchi ldren can eat anything they want. The engineering group would make me swords…”

“I never met my grandfather as he passed away before I was born,” Patrick adds, “but I learned a lot about hotels from living in them all throughout my life. I had room attendants, telephone operators, engineers, etc. as my playmates. We had the whole hotel to play hide-and-go-seek.

The hotel staff used to teach me how to do their work when I was just seven years old. I always have a fond memory of operating the old fashioned telephone exchange with all of its intersecting plugs, cables, and buttons. So, I pretty much learned from everyone who worked in the hotel back then,” he says with a smile.

“I love hotels, I knew that I was going to be a hotelier in the future,” Ryan continues. But in a way, the older brother admits, the life and lifestyle was likewise sheltered.

When he was 12 and Patrick was eight, they moved out of the hotel environs and into a condominium. Both were then exposed to their father’s construction business. The lure of the hotel world was too strong, however, as they both attended the Kwantlen Polytechnic University in Vancouver to study Business Administration, then went on to attend Cornell University’s General Managers Program and Professional Development Programs in Cornell-Nanyang Institute of Hospitality Management in Singapore.

The brother’s collective learnings and experiences manifest in The Bellevue Manila (of which father Johnny Chan is chairman) and their other property ventures. Since 2003, the hotel has slowly expanded, first housing the main wing, then an additional ballroom, then a new wing (the “Tower Wing”, launched October of 2009). A new restaurant and bar called Vue Bar, an impressive space that can host private parties, ballroom dancing nights, and wedding receptions, was launched in December.

Hotel B, Bellevue’s equivalent of a business hotel (“a three star hotel with five star rooms,” describes Ryan) will launch this June.

Outside Manila, the brothers are working on a project in Bohol. Collaborating with architect and interior designer Boy Recio, a resort will rise on a three-hectare property in Panglao, due for completion in 2011.

Running the Business with Heart and Hands

It takes a brave soul to do what the brothers have been doing, and continue to do, but many will say that’s the best thing about being young you’ve got more leeway for risks, more time to recover if your vision doesn’t go as well as planned.

Right now the “vision” that’s been guiding the brothers, and what they’ve learned from growing up in hotels, seem to be working. The figures speak for themselves. Patrick shares that room occupancy (rooms booked) at Bellevue has increased 65 per cent, as compared to 2003; occupied rooms, 148 per cent; and manning, 200 per cent. In February 2006, Bellevue ranked among the top three highest occupancy rates in Metro Manila hotels (Makati Shangri-La, 94.1 percent; Hotel Philippine Plaza (Sofitel) 92.6; Bellevue Manila, 92 percent).

“It’s proper investment placing,” Ryan relates. “It’s the quality of hotel product, the right service, attention to detail, the phone in the bathroom, the right threadcount of the sheets, the soundproof walls,” he enumerates.

Primarily, though, it’s the brothers’ faith in emerging markets that seems to make the most impact in their success. “Emerging markets, that’s where we want to go,” says Ryan. “Alabang, Bohol, Cagayan de Oro—these are gold mines. You want to be near emergent districts if you’re putting up a business hotel; you want to be near the beach if you’re a resort hotel, not have to take a two-hour boat ride to get where you’re going…”

At the same time, you have to be sensitive to the residents in those markets. “You have to be friendly with the locals,” he says. In Panglao, for example, he himself visited the barangay hall and explained to them how a new development could be mutually beneficial: new jobs, computers, a hospital, schools, lit streets, a church (Ryan is a devout and active Christian).

“We are not expecting anything in return,” adds Patrick. “We just believe in supporting local communities and in furthering economic growth in those areas.”

And in any business—hospitality, construction, education, what have you—one of the most important keys to success is what the brothers have been practicing. No one can deny this, as both are quite visible in their hotel, walking about and attending to things themselves. “Being hands on, if you want to do things right, you have to do it yourselves. Or supervise, hands-on.”