Fujita Kanko is bringing its Gracery brand to Osaka for the first time. The Japanese hotel group will begin construction on the Hotel Gracery Namba in January 2018 ahead of its scheduled opening in summer 2019.
As the 11th hotel in Fujita Kanko’s Hotel Gracery brand, the 170-guestroom Hotel Gracery Namba will be developed near the Namba area's shopping, entertainment, restaurants, nightclubs, public transportation, including Namba stations on the Midosuji Subway Line and Japan Railway, and airport shuttles at Osaka City Air Terminal.
The new Gracery falls in line with the hotel company's plans to expand throughout Asia. “We aim to add new hotels in key destinations with high potential, and Osaka is obviously one of them,” Akira Segawa, Fujita Kanko’s president and CEO, said in a statement.
The hotel group's current development pipeline across Asia includes Hotel Gracery Asakusa and Hotel Gracery Seoul in 2018 and Hotel Gracery Taipei in 2019. The group has also signed a serviced apartment project coming to Greater Jakarta of Indonesia in 2019, its initial venture into the serviced apartment sector. The apartment building, which still hasn't received a brand name, will have 214 guestrooms once construction is complete in Cikarang.
Established in 1955, the Tokyo-based Fujita Kanko has 70 properties and facilities, including its flagship, Hotel Chinzanso Tokyo, and 35 more hotels in the Hotel Gracery and Washington Hotels groups. As part of the Washington Hotels brand, Fujita Kanko recently launched the Kisarazu Washington Hotel on Japan's Tokyo Bay on Oct. 26, 2017. The 146-guestroom Kisarazu hotel in Chiba Prefecture is the group's 26th property operating under the Washington Hotel brand. It was developed near the Tokyo Bay Aqua-Line bridge-tunnel, Haneda Airport, the city center, public transportation, the Boso Peninsula and the Kujukuri Beach.