SINGAPORE (EDGEPROP) - Garcha Group is busy preparing for the reopening of the 49-room Duxton Reserve on Duxton Road on Dec 11. “Bookings started on Dec 2, and we already have a substantial uptick in reservations,” says Harpreet Bedi, the group’s CEO and legal counsel. Incidentally, Bedi is also the wife of the luxury property and hotel group’s chairman and founder, Satinder Garcha.

Homebound by travel restrictions as the Covid-19 pandemic rages on in many countries, people are turning to staycations as a means of escape, especially with the enticing $100 SingapoRediscovers vouchers. “People are using this opportunity to experience hotels which they may not be able to during normal times, because that will probably be double the cost,” says Garcha.

At the 41-room The Vagabond Club on Syed Alwi Road, which is already open, for just $250 a night, included in the staycation package is a four-course dinner, two cocktails, breakfast in the morning and late checkout. “In terms of value, it’s worth $500,” says Bedi. The same package at Duxton Reserve costs “in the high $300s”. However, in terms of value, it is at least double the amount.

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“I prefer to give people who come for staycations more value so they can experience the food, the cocktails, the rooms,” adds Garcha. “After all, our hotels are experiential.”

Even though staycations may not fill rooms beyond the holiday season, and room rates today are lower compared to pre-Covid times, Garcha believes it is important for hotels to reopen in order to keep staff employed, and more importantly, “to get ready for a post-Covid world”, which he reckons is likely to come in the latter part of 2021.

‘Recalibrate’ and rebuild

The business slowdown due to Covid-19 has allowed Garcha Group to “recalibrate” its hotel portfolio, says Bedi.

At the end of May, in the midst of the “circuit breaker”, luxury hotel operator Six Senses ceased management of two of Garcha Group’s hotels: the former Six Senses Duxton, which opened in April 2018; and the former Six Senses Maxwell, which debuted in January 2019.

The two hotels have since been rebranded Duxton Reserve and Maxwell Reserve respectively, and will officially enter Marriott Hotels’ Autograph Collection early next year.

“These properties are urban, experiential and opulent,” observes Garcha. “The ethos of Six Senses is more resort-style. And both parties realised that it wasn’t a very good fit. So it was a mutual termination.”

Garcha Group’s two other hotels, namely, The Vagabond Club and the upcoming Serangoon House (the former Claremont Hotel) on Serangoon Road, will be parked under Marriott’s Tribute portfolio. “So all four hotels will be under the Marriott umbrella,” says Garcha.

The attraction is that the hotels will retain their names and distinct personalities, and will be managed by Garcha Group under a franchise agreement with Marriott. “Actually, it’s a kind of silver lining,” says Garcha. “We can really infuse our staff with the company culture as all four hotels are under the management of Garcha Group. So, it’s four different hotels but one identity.”

Mostly run by women

The group is rebuilding its team slowly. “We are building up from a low base over the next six to nine months,” says Garcha. He aims to increase the staff count to 200 by the time the 138-room Maxwell Reserve reopens in the middle of next year, and possibly 250 by the time the 90-room Serangoon House opens in 3Q2021.

When the group started hiring staff a few months ago, Garcha found himself inundated with resumes from former Singapore Airlines (SIA) staff. “SIA is the best of the best in terms of hospitality service and training,” he says.

That prompted him to rethink the group’s philosophy: to have all the hotels managed by women, with his wife leading the charge as the “Lady Boss”. Bedi joined Garcha Group five years ago as the CEO and legal counsel for its various businesses, which include real estate development, investments in tech companies and the family office. “I do feel that women are more collaborative, and we tend to have a higher level of empathy and EQ,” she says.

Garcha adds: “I may be facetious, but women are better than men as hospitality providers”. Hence, he wants at least 90% of the hotel staff to be women.

The upcoming Serangoon House will be the newest hotel in Garcha Group’s portfolio. It is a repositioning and refurbishment of the former Claremont Hotel at Serangoon Road that Garcha had purchased for $70 million (about $778,000 per key) in June 2019.

“It’s quite different from our other hotels and it’s not as old,” says Garcha. “However, it’s right opposite Mustafa Centre, near the main temple and Farrer Park MRT Station. So the neighbourhood is as ethnic as it gets.”

Days of the Raj

As such, the design of Serangoon House will be inspired by the British colonial design elements in India “in the days of the Raj”,  notes Garcha. This will include the interiors, furnishings and hand-carved wooden furniture.

The main restaurant at the hotel will be named Shikar, which means “to hunt for sport”. “In the old days, Maharajas rode elephants or horses to go on their big game hunts,” Garcha relates. “And it was a rite of passage to shoot a tiger. Nowadays, tigers are endangered.”

Shikar’s cuisine will also invoke the old colonial hunting days, when the game meat or a deer would be marinated with spices and slow-cooked. “That’s part of the old Indian culture, and that’s the kind of food we will serve at Shikar,” says Garcha.

One of the main features at Serangoon House will be an 18th-century jewel-encrusted sword that is Bedi’s family heirloom. The sword once belonged to Raja Baba Khem Singh Bedi, the 10th direct descendant of the founder of Sikhism, Guru Nanak. In fact, Bedi herself is the 19th descendent of Guru Nanak. The sword will be enclosed within a glass and brass display at a prominent place in the hotel lobby.

Bedi’s mother is from an illustrious family in Punjab as well. From her mother, she inherited a tiger’s claw, which she usually wears as a lucky charm. “This poor tiger’s claw has survived, but in jewellery form,” she says.

The Shikar restaurant will be launched at Maxwell Reserve too. In keeping with the hunting theme, Garcha has commissioned London-based de Guornay, a firm specialising in hand-painted wallpaper, to paint old hunting scenes for the restaurant.

As Maxwell Reserve is still designated as one of the facilities for the government’s Stay Home Notice (SHN) until next March, it will reopen to the public only in the middle of the year.

‘Most challenging project’

Garcha had purchased the property at Maxwell Road from US property fund AEW in October 2012 for $75 million. AEW had purchased the row of 14 conserved shophouses just a few years earlier and had refurbished it extensively before turning them into office spaces for lease. Converting the property into a luxury hotel  “was the most challenging project I’ve done”, says Garcha.

“It was like solving a 3D jigsaw puzzle and multivariable calculus simultaneously,” he adds. “So it took us a while, and we had to get all the necessary permits.” In fact, Garcha reckons this was one of the last few hotel licenses that URA approved for conserved shophouses in the area.

Garcha engaged French architect and interior designer Jacques Garcia to design the interiors. Garcia is famous for his design of luxury hotels in Paris such as the Le Méridien and the Royal Monceau à Paris. In fact, Maxwell Reserve is the second hotel designed by Garcia within the Garcha Group’s portfolio. The first was Vagabond Club, which also marked the group’s flagship hotel property. It is a refurbishment of six adjoining shophouses on Syed Alwi Road, which Garcha purchased for $23 million in early 2012.

The Vagabond Club has 41 rooms on the upper floors and features a whiskey library for members only. For an annual fee of $3,000, members get a locker to store their liquor for future use at the club. The fee also entitles members to 10 room nights a year. “So we are discouraging drink-driving,” says Garcha.

The 49-room Duxton property, located within a row of eight adjoining conserved shophouses, was purchased by Garcha in 2013 for $50 million or $1.02 million per key. He had purchased it from Berjaya Group, and gutted the interiors.

Garcha then engaged British interior designer Anouska Hempel to design the interiors. Hempel is famous for her design of the Blakes Hotel in London and Amsterdam as well as The Hempel in London.

My Posh Pads

When reopening Duxton Reserve this month, Garcha Group is also launching Anouska’s Bar and Lounge at the hotel. There will be special cocktails and beverages created by Hempel, exclusively for the bar, such as Anouska’s Canton Sour, Hong Long Choc and Tonics.

While Shikar will be the main restaurant for Maxwell Reserve and the upcoming Serangoon House, Chinese restaurant Yellow Pot will headline the hotels at Duxton Reserve and Vagabond.

The group is also launching a new, five-star co-living concept, called My Posh Pads, across all the four hotels in its portfolio. Some of the rooms on the fourth floor of Maxwell Reserve, the Le Petite rooms, lend themselves very well to co-living, notes Garcha.

Residents of My Posh Pads will be able to use all the services and amenities of the hotel properties, including laundry, the gym and spa. “But the cost will be significantly less than the daily room rate, and there will be a minimum stay of one month,” says Garcha.

What’s more, My Posh Pads’ residents can switch from one property to another within Garcha’s portfolio. There will be two or three tiers of rates for the different properties under the concept, says Garcha. He intends to launch My Posh Pads early next year.

“Next year is going to be exciting,” says Garcha. “We are opening four new hotel concepts, slowly getting the right people as we build our teams. So actually in a funny sort of way, Covid has been a boon for us. It allowed us to consolidate our backend and to come up with the only-women-run hotel concept.”

Check out the latest listings near Duxton Reserve, Maxwell Reserve, Murray Terrace, Claremont, Serangoon Road

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