Lotte Hotels and Resorts announced that it will open a new hotel on the famous Philippine resort island of Cebu.

According to the hotel, the new Lotte City Hotel Cebu will be located on top of J Centre Shopping Mall in Mandaue City and is scheduled to open in 2014.

The hotel is being built on the existing structure of the shopping mall, occupying the 6th to 23rd floors. Its construction began this month.

The new hotel will feature 350 rooms as well as a swimming pool with kid’s pool, a sky lounge, a business center and an all day-dining restaurant.

“Lotte City Hotel Cebu will appeal to the growing number of domestic and international travelers to Cebu,” said a hotel official. 

“Many hotels and resorts are centered on Mactan Island and there are not enough rooms for business travelers or tourists on city tours. We expect that J Center Shopping Mall will be an ideal place for both business and leisure travelers as it is just a 15-minute drive from the Mactan Airport and 2 kilometers away from the beach,” he said.

The hotel signed an MOU with J Center Shopping Mall last month. The parent company of the shopping mall, Profood International Corporation, the largest producer of dried fruit in the Philippines, also owns a 50 percent stake in another Korean hotel chain, Imperial Palace Resort.

Lotte Hotel aims to become a leading global hotel and resort group with more than 40 hotel chains around the world by 2018. It also aims to become one of the top three hotels in Asia.

It seeks to open Lotte Hotels in Hanoi, Vietnam, in 2014 and Shenyang, China, in 2017, in addition to the existing Lotte Hotel Moscow and Lotte City Hotel Kinshicho in Japan.

Korea’s largest chain of five-star hotels runs hotels in downtown Seoul, Jamsil in southeastern Seoul, Ulsan, Jeju and Busan, two business hotels in Mapo and Gimpo Airport and a premium resort in Jeju.

It plans to open more city hotels in Jeju, Daejeon, Ulsan and Seoul’s Guro district in 2014.

By Lee Woo-young (wylee@heraldcorp.com)