The Developer Who Bet Kuching Could Carry Malaysia’s First voco

On a July morning in Kuching, Sarawak Premier Tan Sri Abang Johari Openg cut the ribbon on Wisma Elica—the mixed-use rebuild that finally puts Malaysia’s first voco hotel, an IHG Hotels & Resorts premium brand, on East Malaysia’s map. The useful story under the ceremony is not another brand-flag checklist. It is the local developer who refused to treat an ageing hotel as scrap.

Dato’ Bobby Ting Sie Ching, managing director of Elica Equity Sdn Bhd, the Malaysian property company behind the project, has been saying the same thing since the partnership with IHG was announced: many people walked the old building and saw a tired hotel whose best years were finished. He saw a landmark that could keep serving Kuching if someone was willing to gut and rebuild it properly. That is the traveler’s so-what. Adaptive reuse in a riverside capital beats a greenfield tower that ignores the city’s memory.

Guests have been checking into voco Kuching since June—321 rooms minutes from Kuching International Airport, designed with hospitality studio SL+A Hotels and local cultural cues rather than generic lobby marble. Within weeks of opening, the hotel had already hosted more than 1,200 delegates from six countries, a soft-claim worth reading as meeting capacity, not as a permanent MICE monopoly. The grand opening on July 28 simply made the civic case public: leisure stays, business events, and a second life for a familiar site.

Beside the hotel sits Care Collective, framed in local reporting as East Malaysia’s largest senior wellness centre—an unusual roommate for a lifestyle brand, and part of why Ting keeps insisting this was never “just another hotel.” Street-level work includes a redesigned five-foot way and outdoor social space around AMPM, the day-to-night café-bar; collaborations with Sarawakian musician Alena Murang and Malaysian fashion designer Jonathan Liang keep the creative layer local. The opening also soft-claims Sarawak’s first Tesla Destination Charging hub at a hotel—useful if you drive electric on Borneo, decorative if you do not.

IHG’s own framing matches the ownership story. Rajit Sukumaran, senior vice-president and managing director for East Asia & Pacific at IHG Hotels & Resorts, has said the partnership with Elica was about shared values, not only keys. Earlier, when the deal was signed, Patrick Finn, then IHG’s vice president of development for South East Asia & Korea, called working with Ting a building block for Kuching and Sarawak’s economies. Magdalina Chung, general manager of voco Kuching, has been selling the softer brand cues: a bear-shaped bahulu welcome with Gula Apong in a woven holder, LUMA for dining, and the Rainforest Ballroom among more than 2,400 square metres of event space.

For a Pacific-desk traveler, the booking question is practical. Soft-claim Kuching as a Borneo gateway for culture, river, and national-park add-ons—not as a substitute for KL or Singapore. Soft-claim voco when you want IHG One Rewards points and a brand that behaves more “unstuffy premium” than formal luxury. Soft-claim Care Collective as context for the building’s dual purpose, not as a medical product you book with your room. Soft-claim rates, ballroom calendars, and Tesla stall access on the live site before you treat any ceremony quote as inventory.

What to watch next is small and honest. Whether Kuching’s international airlift keeps feeding the ballroom. Whether the senior-wellness wing changes who stays in the tower midweek. Whether Ting’s bet—that a local owner and a global flag can share one reinvented landmark—reads as a one-off or as a template for other East Malaysian cities. The useful question is not whether Kuching needed another logo. It is whether a local owner would stick with the building long enough to make the brand honest.