Hotelier Indonesia
REBEL BEACH CLUB LE PIRATE JUMPS INTO BED WITH GEN-Z TRAVELLERS AS IT TARGETS 20 PROPERTIES BY 2020 WITHIN AND BEYOND INDONESIA
JAKARTA, INDONESIA – With three clubs already open in Greater Bali the brand takes to the sea with Explorer Cruises
Indonesia’s rebel beach club brand Le Pirate has announced plans to expand its footprint within the country and throughout Asia. In the span of three short years the father son team of Fredo and Louka Taffin has created a blueprint for fast-paced growth with their social beach club and hotel concept.
Long-time Bali design guru Fredo Taffin came up with the idea for Le Pirate after facing the challenge of building resort hotels in remote tropical locations. His concept was to appealing distill accommodation options into eco-friendly, pre-fab bungalows that are fast and cost efficient to build but do not destroy the islands’ beaches.
Taffin teamed up with his millennial son Louka, who has already become a successful hospitality entrepreneur at the age 27. Both of them hated the way resorts were all about welcome drinks, grim soulless buffets, and designed to put guests in a virtual lock-down, keeping them away from each other.
Louka explains, “traditional hoteliers are obsessed by guest rooms and forget that hospitality from its earliest roots in pub hotels, is all about meeting people, going local and not just about the four walls you sleep in. At Le Pirate we don’t want heads on beds, we want bums at the beach club, travellers who have a pulse and aren’t afraid to use it.”
Today, the brand’s pathway to expansion is clearly its points of difference – being able to pre-fabricate beach club hotels and assemble them on-site complete with fit-out in under six months from start to finish. Investors often have to wait a decade to generate a good return, with a typical Le Pirate project; it is two to three years.
Fredo adds, “we are breaking down the walls of hotel ownership that used to be measured in dog years but have now been be accelerated into real time.”
From the onset, Le Pirate’s first beach club hotel in Nusa Ceningan, off the coast of Bali, gathered a strong reputation with he social media and smartphone set. Images, YouTube videos and chats on Facebook, Twitter and beyond have been a strong driver of direct bookings.
Further momentum came with the opening of a larger property in Gili Trawangan and most recently in the buzzing destination of Labuan Bajo in Flores.
As for the shift into floating beach club cruisers, tagged as Explorer, Louka says, “we wanted to take one of Indonesia’s key attributes, the spectacular ocean and numerous islands, and make them more accessible in a fun, in an authentic and natural way. No pretentions here, its bums on boats, and the more the merrier.”
Looking to expansion, Fredo and Louka have teamed up with hospitality expert Bill Barnett, Founder of Asia-based C9 Hotelworks, to grow the model into one that is now pushing outside Indonesia. With Le Pirate International established in Singapore, the team is working on pushing out licensing and branding model and engaging developers who want to enter the hotel business, but who don’t know where or how to start. The “hotel in a box” concept covers design, training, fit-out, as well as management systems that don’t take a rocket scientist to run.
Currently the development pipeline is focused on the Philippines, with its enormous 7,107 islands, and also in burgeoning destinations like Sri Lanka and Myanmar.
Fredo comments, “wherever beach bums are headed, we will be there with our beach clubs, boats and an ability to innovate in emerging locations such as remote islands. Travellers at any age still have those childhood dreams of being a pirate, and our clubs and cruises are meant to bring back the thrills, chills and adventure of getting outside those four same hotel walls. We aren’t just hitting the millennial market. We are keen to build a brand that will also fit Gen-Z.”
www.LePirate.com
Louka Taffins
Director of Business Development
Le Pirate
