London-based M&C (MLC.L), which operates over 100 hotels worldwide, said revenue per available room (RevPAR), a key industry measure, increased by 5.6 percent on a like for like basis.

"Looking forward, we expect continuing healthy progress in London, Singapore and certain other Asian destinations and we are focusing on improving performance at our U.S. properties," said group chairman Kwek Leng Beng.

Revenue per available room increased by 7.7 percent in Singapore and 7 percent in London. But the strongest growth came out of the 'Rest of Asia' region, including hotels in Seoul, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta and Beijing, where RevPAR increased by 21.6 percent.

The group, which is majority-owned by chairman Kwek Leng Beng's Singapore-based property company City Developments, made a pretax profit of 25.9 million pounds in the three months to 31 March, an increase on 19.7 million pounds profit made during the same period in 2011.

With cash reserves of 388 million pounds and lower debt levels, Beng said M & C is looking to acquire hotels across the world.

"We have been actively seeking such opportunities since the second half of last year, but vendors' price expectations in key gateway cities are still too high," he added.

Although Beng believes it is too early to predict how the company will perform in 2012, he said trading to-date had been in line with management expectations.

The company said group revenue per available room in the four weeks of April 2012 had increased by 8.6 percent on a like-for-like basis with London up 8.3 percent and Singapore increasing by 6.2 percent. New York fell by 3.7 percent but was up 4.6 percent when the UN Plaza is excluded from the numbers.

M&C shares, which have increased by 21 percent since the start of the year, closed at 492.9 pence on Wednesday, valuing the company at 1.57 billion pounds. The stock was up 1.7 percent at 501 pence by 0715 GMT on Thursday, outperforming a 0.2 percent higher FTSE 250 mid-cap index .FTMC.

(Reporting By Drazen Jorgic; Editing by Paul Hoskins)

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