Two members of the Global Hotel Alliance, a network of seven luxury brands with more than 150 properties around the world, have announced expansions. Pan Pacific Hotels and Resorts, the leading Pacific Rim player in the alliance, will expand to 13 properties with openings in Tianjin, China, and Singapore. Effective February 1, the company will reflag Singapore's Negara on Claymore as the Pan Pacific Orchard, its second hotel in the island nation. Pan Pacific is redecorating and upgrading the 48 Pacific Club executive-level accommodations, which occupy four of the hotel's 20 stories. Located within the Orchard Road district, the hotel has a total of 200 guest rooms.
Pan Pacific also is building a 24-story, 342-room hotel in the northern port city of Tianjin, China's third largest city. It is expected to open in 2010 as part of a mixed-use development. The Pan Pacific Tianjin will feature two ballrooms, 15 meeting rooms, a gym and a swimming pool with a view of the Hai He River.
Kempinski Hotels, the dominant European member of the Global Hotel Alliance, will manage a new hotel due to open on Egypt's Soma Bay Peninsula in mid-2008. The 324-room Kempinski Hotel Soma Bay will be part of a master-planned resort on the Red Sea that also will include a 70-berth marina; a quarter-mile-long beach; waterfalls, lagoons and pools; an 18-hole golf course; four tennis courts; and a gym and spa. Design of the hotel, which is currently under construction, is Moorish-inspired. Kempinski earlier announced that it is opening another Red Sea property, in Aqaba, Jordan, this spring.