STR Global Expands Presence in Japan

STR Global has expanded its presence in Asia Pacific with the appointment of Megumi Ishida as Regional Manager. Ishida San's primary role is to focus on the important Japanese market.

Ms. Ishida's experience within the hospitality industry has been mainly within hotel operations and marketing. In 2004 she worked at the Sofitel Tokyo before joining JAL Hotels where she worked from April 2005 until June 2010.

"The appointment of Megumi Ishida to focus on the Japanese market strengthens our existing footprint of representation in Singapore, Beijing, Jakarta and Sydney," said Jonas Ogren, area director of STR Global Asia.

The introduction of STR Global's data recruitment efforts in Tokyo, a collaboration with Deloitte Tohmatsu FAS, comes at a time when the performance of the Japanese hotel market is sluggish compared with the region as a whole.

The June STR Global Asia Pacific Hotel Review shows Japanese year-on-year growth in RevPAR of 7.1% for the year-to-June 2010. This is below the 20 percentage plus performance for the Asia Pacific and northeastern Asia (China, Japan, North Korea, South Korea, Mongolia, Taiwan) regions.

Additionally, year-to-date performance for the major Japanese cities of Tokyo and Osaka is mixed. Whilst both cities outperform the national average in terms of occupancy, the ADR for Osaka of -2.8% is considerably below the national average of -0.2%, and yet Tokyo is significantly above with 6.2%.

"We are delighted with our cooperation with Deloitte and with the development of our data recruitment effort, which will allow us to deliver more comprehensive market data and benchmarking to the important Japanese market," said Elizabeth Randall, managing director of STR Global. "We intend to build on our current growth in the country by increasing our presence in Tokyo (40 properties) and Osaka (25) respectively and expanding well beyond these two cities."

Ms Ishida is based at the Tokyo office which is located at: 3-3-1 Shin Tokyo Building, Marunouchi, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 1000005, Japan.

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