AYERS Hospitality - Case Study of Lifestyle Hotel Project Management

In Tsukiji area of Tokyo, TSUKI—a lifestyle hotel that offers a Japanese cultural experience—opened in April 2019. With 10 floors above ground, a total floor space of 1,213.82 m², and a lot area of 194.56 m², it is a medium-sized hotel. With AYERS Hospitality LLC (AYERS) as the project owner, TORAO+ HSIEH ARCHITECTS did the architectural design, and JLL Japan's Project and Development Management Department undertook the project management.

In fact, this TSUKI project was also originally planned to be developed as a business hotel, but then AYERS acquired the project and everything that came with it, and decided to change the design into a lifestyle hotel in order to differentiate it from competitor hotels. However, when the change of plan was finalized, there was a huge gap between the construction schedule the construction company presented and the scheduled opening date AYERS wanted. How to fill the gap became a major challenge.

Besides, the investor in this project is based in Hong Kong and is not fluent in Japanese, let alone having no base in Japan. How could they smoothly manage the Japanese parties involved in the construction and make applications and undertake other procedures according to the relevant laws and regulations? Kin-Man: "The biggest challenges in investing in the Japanese market are the legal system and language." As he points out, they needed to remove these two concerns.

To address these challenges, JLL not only checked the Building Standards Act, but also provided assistance with matters related to the regulations and applications that come with actually running a hotel, including the Inns and Hotels Act, which is indispensable for a hotel business. JLL Japan drew on the extensive knowledge and expertise that it has built up through working on numerous hotel development projects in order to help in completing the project and developing an environment in which the hotel could smoothly start operating after opening. In addition, JLL is a global agency and has a lot of Japanese-English bilingual human resources, so there is nothing to worry about regarding the language issue, either. As an agent for a project owner whose first language is English, JLL staff provided a bridge between the project owner and construction companies, coordinating with the construction companies and assisting in placing separate orders.