Naumi, the latest name in boutique hotels, opens in Singapore next week, with room rates ranging from $390 to $1,200.

Naumi, the latest name in boutique hotels, opens in Singapore next week, with room rates ranging from $390 to $1,200.

Located next to Raffles Hotel in Seah Street, the 40-room Naumi will offer mostly deluxe suites costing $500 a night - about the same as a room at a five-star hotel. But Naumi is a different proposition. Owned by the Hind Group, its managing director Surya Jhunjhnuwala says that the hotel will provide ‘highly personalised’ service.

The initial staff-to-guest ratio is one to one - and Mr Jhunjhnuwala still expects this to increase. His family owned the Imperial Hotel off River Valley Road between 1977 and 1999 before selling it. ‘We have always been keen to get back into the hospitality business,’ he says.

This time, Hind Group wants to focus on the boutique segment. Mr Jhunjhnuwala says that the target is to have hotels with a total of 1,000 rooms within three years, with the ideal size for a Naumi hotel being 30-70 rooms.

The group will look for opportunities in China, Vietnam, Hong Kong and Thailand and is still looking in Singapore. But it is not likely to find anything for $18 million - the price it paid for the Metropole Hotel in April 2006, which was converted into Naumi in eight months.

Indeed, it could sell the hotel now and make a tidy profit. But Mr Jhunjhnuwala says that although there is ‘a price for everything’, selling Naumi is not the plan at present. The old Metropole Hotel was gutted and given a hip makeover by award-winning local firm Eco-id Architecture and Design at a cost of more than $10 million or an estimated $250,000 a room.

Naumi is by no means Singapore’s first boutique hotel. Establishments such as The Scarlet, Hotel 1929 and the New Majestic Hotel are already popular with the fashion-conscious crowd.

But Mr Jhunjhnuwala says Naumi is less ‘thematic’. He is confident it will provide at least a 5 per cent return on investment.

Source : Business Times - 06 Sept 2007