MALAYSIA has always been marketed as a travel destination famous for its
islands and beaches. Even the government’s Visit Malaysia Year 2014 campaign is
promoting them as one of the attractions.
According to Philippe
Villeroux, the founder and director of Tropical Area Resort Consultants (TARC),
Malaysia is not building resorts fast enough, considering it has a lot more to
offer. TARC is a resort design consultancy.
“There are very few resort
projects in Malaysia now,” says the Frenchman. “The resort industry is quite
slow here.”
He says there are probably many reasons why the resort industry in the east
coast is not thriving as much as it should.
“It’s probably due to the
monsoon season.” However, he says it isn’t really a major issue.
“I
think it’s a mistake because at the end of the day, you still have a nice place
to visit and beautiful things to see.
“People generally say it’s going to
be seasonal. Look at Koh Samui in Thailand, it has the same climate and season,
and people still go there all year round. It’s a shame though, because Redang
and Perhentian islands are so much better than Koh Samui.”
The problem,
he says, is that Langkawi and other islands in Malaysia rely too much on
transfer by boat.
“When you build a resort, you must provide the services
as well. That means, if the sea is rough, there must be a way for visitors to
reach the islands by other means.”
Building a
reputationVilleroux has 13 years of experience designing
resorts in places like Sepang in Malaysia, the Maldives and French Polynesia,
and used to work and live in Tahiti.
He was at the REKA Conference in
October last year where he shared his knowledge and experience on resort designs
in more than 40 remote locations.
He has done design work with Club Med
when working at Eric Raffy & Associates. Then, he joined Tropical
Architecture, a leading architecture firm in French Polynesia, where he gained
extensive knowledge about overwater resorts.
When Tropical Architecture
was hit by the global financial crisis in 1998, Villeroux was forced to move
back to Tahiti. In 2001, he came back to Malaysia and set up Tropical Area Sdn
Bhd, concentrating on resorts in the Maldives, French Polynesia and Southeast
Asia.
“I came to Malaysia in the early 1990s to work on a Club Med Cherating
renovation project. I was working in French Polynesia at the time. Tahiti is a
beautiful place, but it was too far for doing business.”
Villeroux says
he fell in love with Malaysia during his journey to Cherating, Pahang, from
Kuala Lumpur.
“At the time, there was no highway and the trip just made
me fall in love with the rainforest between Pahang and Kuala Lumpur. It’s
difficult to explain.”
He has worked on a host of projects in Malaysia,
including Sepang Gold Coast in Sepang, Selangor, and Club Med Cherating, Pahang,
as well as a few others in Langkawi, Ipoh and Kuala Lumpur.
According to
him, his company has 75 projects in Malaysia, both completed and ongoing.
“It’s starting to be a good business for us because we have built a
reputation. And it’s purely by word of mouth.”
Villeroux says a resort is
the location and the environment, not the buildings.
“People don’t come for the buildings. You go to a resort because of the
location, the beaches, the forests and the views.
“Something I learnt
while working with Six Senses Hotels Resorts Spas in the Maldives is that the
ideal resort is one without buildings. If you have a beautiful island, you only
need a building, just a nice place to sleep.”
Today, almost half of
TARC’s clients come to them with a parcel of land earmarked for a resort. “We
have clients who have land but don’t know what to do with it,” he says.
Despite the good demand for his services, Villeroux never takes on more
than four projects at a time.
“My strategy is to stay small. It’s pretty
easy to grow the company, but all I want is to maintain a small team of not more
than 20 people. We are focusing on quality rather than
quantity.”
According to him, TARC wants to improve its products and
services. “It’s smaller, so the quality is better. The turnover will grow with
the quality of our projects.”
This strategy is also a safety measure in
terms of being able to withstand the ups and downs of the market since there are
a lot of challenges in this industry, he says.
“We had a project in
Lahad Datu that was affected by the intrusion of Sulu gunmen, while a kidnap and
murder case happened at another project on Pom Pom island in Sabah. This means
that the projects are often halted. We have to be conservative.”
He says
most of his projects take eight to 10 years to complete, particularly if there
are issues with land rights and design.
Moving aheadHe adds
that 2014 is going to be a year of continuity for several of his projects.
“We are in the process of designing two projects in Sabah. We’re also
starting the physical work at Ritz Carlton in Langkawi and a project each in the
Maldives and Bali.”
In Sabah, Villeroux is looking at smaller projects.
Besides the two in hand, Villeroux is expecting to take on another six to seven
equally smaller projects. “One of our projects is on Pulau Gaya. The first phase
will be a sort of kelong floating around the island, never staying at one spot
for more than six months. It’s for people who don’t like making reservations. So
we are trying to work with the villagers on the island to sell their produce to
the tourists.”
He adds that the kelong project will take a long time to
complete as it will have to go through several phases, from design to
construction.
However, he says, the state authorities are very helpful.
“It’s a matter of explaining and making them understand. Most of the time it’s
just respecting the locals and taking into account their needs. This is the
balance you have to strike.”
On the challenges he faces in the industry,
Villeroux says the time it takes to complete a project is one of them.
“Our projects are usually developed over five to 10 years. During this
period, there will be bursts of intense work and long waits. It is quite
difficult to have the same focus on the project while having to organise our
activities with flexibility.”
TARC also experiences some financial
difficulties. According to him, the contract fees may seem promising initially,
but will look very small after six years of work, with another two years to
go.
“So, you really need to focus on the project and its achievement
instead of the financial gain.”
Another challenge is the members of his
team. Villeroux says it is difficult to find professionals with long-term
commitment and the ability to adapt to different environments.
“Our
projects usually seem simple to young architects. However, designing small
buildings in natural settings is not as appealing to them as designing a
100-storey tower. In fact, this requires a lot of knowledge, culture and
sensitivity.”
Villeroux’s solution to this is to have a small team of key
people. Some of his staff have been with him since the establishment of the
company.
However, his greatest challenge is aborted projects. “As we
usually intervene at the early stages of development, clients sometimes don’t
know what they want to do with their investment, so many projects are never
completed.”
He says for every project completed, five are stopped at
different stages of design. He adds that one client said he would rather spend
RM10 million in abortive studies than lose RM50 million in a failed resort.
“It is very difficult to have dreamed of a resort that you always
believe will be the best only to realise that it will never happen.
“The
ideas we come up with for a particular project are never applied to another. We
design based on the site and the type of holiday the resort will provide, so a
lot of the solutions are unique. It hurts to see that some of them will never be
used.”
This article first appeared in
The Edge Malaysia
Weekly, on February 14, 2014.
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