Philippine Daily Inquirer Digital Edition

EMBOLDENED TO CONTINUE THE GOOD WORK

KEVIN L. TAN Chief strategy officer Megaworld Corp.

The past 20 months have been very challenging, not just to us but to a variety of other industries and businesses as well.

A lot has changed with how we operate our businesses at Megaworld. From how we conduct our headquarters operation, frontline operations, all the way to how we even construct our buildings and market our developments. All that has been severely disrupted and changed because of the restrictions that have been imposed to contain the pandemic.

Finding opportunities

We found it both a challenge and an opportunity on how we connect to our customers. The traditional retail channels have all been restricted and disrupted so we’ve had to find new ways to get to our customers.

We responded to the needs of our customers through new digital connections we have established. New habits are currently forming which opened up a lot of new channels and platforms.

During the pandemic, we have also reaffirmed the strength of Megaworld’s township model. We saw a study done in Europe at the height of the pandemic about a movement called “the 15-minute city.”

Essentially, they’re looking to re-plan cities like Paris and Barcelona to have people within a 15-minute walking distance from where they work, from where they’d get their essentials, or from medical services. We’re happy to note that we’ve been doing that for the last 20 years. It only reaffirms the strength of this vision we’ve had, and it now emboldens us to continue the good work.

We’ve been motivated to accelerate our product innovation as well. This is something we continue to be excited about as we grow our real estate business, as well as our new digital ventures like Pick.A.Roo and Boozy.ph.

Recovery in demand

We are seeing a lot of pentup demand right now for the retail and tourism sectors. Foot traffic in malls is already recovering following the government’s lifting of restrictions, which is also why we continue to implement stringent health and safety protocols.

There’s also huge demand in the travel and tourism sector, which is why we continue to invest in this segment by building our hotels. We believe that we can develop more meaningful tourism estates all over the country, and we’ve started that with the launch of the 462-ha Paragua Coastown in San Vicente, Palawan, our 27th township.

The BPO sector, which continues to grow resiliently, offers a bright spot. This is why we continue to be bullish about the future of our Megaworld-sponsored MREIT Inc. Recently, we announced plans to inject more assets into MREIT’s existing portfolio, which include top-notch office developments in Uptown Bonifacio, as well as more from Iloilo Business Park and McKinley Hill.

We also continue to see an increasing demand for our residential products, for our horizontal and vertical products, especially those in key cities outside Metro Manila, and surprisingly, in key tourism estates, like Boracay, Tagaytay and Antipolo.

PROPERTY

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2021-12-04T08:00:00.0000000Z

2021-12-04T08:00:00.0000000Z

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Philippine Daily Inquirer