Fit for a president: The hotel owned by one of Manila’s richest men that is home to Xi Jinping during Apec summit

Plenty of eyebrows were raised when the police-escorted motorcade carrying President Xi Jinping  on his arrival in Manila stopped at the lobby of a decades-old hotel far from the city’s business centre of Makati.

Read more: Full coverage of the 2015 Apec summit

The Century Park Hotel was little known even to the press officers of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, who had to look it up on the internet in response to media requests.

But Xi’s arrival meant the hotel, ranked a lowly 26 out of 105 hotels in Manila by TripAdvisor, was probably No1 for security, at least during the summit.

The hotel is owned by Filipino-Chinese tycoon Lucio Tan, a famed patriot who was among the dignitaries appearing at Tiananmen Gate for Beijing’s military parade on September 3.

“It’s necessary to heighten security when the top Chinese leader is staying in [your hotel]. Besides hotel security guards, both the Chinese and Philippine governments sent security officers,” the tycoon’s son Michael Tan said, adding that Xi’s delegation was “a large team”.

The hotel had been on complete lockdown since the night before Xi arrived, with only the Chinese delegation and hotel staff allowed to walk on the roads in front of its entrance.

Xi’s delegation are the only guests at the 19-storey, 478-room hotel during the summit.

The Chinese foreign ministry asked for such precautions when minister Wang Yi visited Manila a week ago – they were not a response to terrorist attacks in Paris last week, said a member of the summit’s security team.