Bangkok's most exclusive hotels

Up-market hotel developer and restaurant company Minor International has announced details of what it says will be one of Bangkok's most exclusive hotels and Thailand's most expensive condominium, the St Regis Hotel and Residence Bangkok, on Rajdamri Road.

The properties are collectively worth Bt4 billion, and although they will not open until 2010, the hotel is already being given six stars - one above the five-star upper limit for the common horde.

The project, next to the Four Seasons Hotel, is being developed by Rajadamri Residence, a subsidiary of the Minor Group, which has a 30-year lease of the land. Minor chairman and CEO William Heinecke said the hotel and residence would comprise 169 guestrooms, 14 junior suites, 14 executive suites, one presidential suite, 22 serviced apartments (one and two bedrooms), 64 residences (three and four bedrooms), three penthouse units and four duplex penthouses with swimming pools.

The hotel part of the property will be managed by US hotel chain Starwood Hotels and Resorts under its top brand, St Regis, with a 20-year contact. Following the style of the St Regis in New York and in other countries, the St Regis Bangkok will target high-end tourists and business travellers and compete directly with the city's top luxury hotels, including The Oriental, the Sukhothai and the Four Seasons.

Heinecke said prices for the residences would start at Bt30 million for a 250-square-metre unit and go up to Bt120 million for each of the four 800-square-metre duplex penthouses.

"This is Minor's most expensive investment, and it will be the most expensive condominium in the country," Heinecke said.

The group is financing the development from its own resources. Apart from the Rajdamri property, the Minor Group plans to develop another two projects in Bangkok, one on Koh Samui, one in Phuket and one in Krabi. Within five years, it expects to invest more than Bt10 billion in Thailand's hotel industry.

It is also developing hotels and residences in Dubai and a resort in the Maldives.

Moreover, it is negotiating with a food and beverage company to introduce a new product into the Thai market, and initial investment for that venture will be about Bt1.5 billion.

The Minor Group runs 15 hotels with more than 2,300 rooms under the Marriott, Four Seasons, Anantara and other brands in Thailand, the Maldives and Vietnam. It also operates 23 spas in the Asia-Pacific and Middle East, as well as more than 600 restaurants in Thailand under The Pizza Company, Swensen's, Sizzler, Dairy Queen, Burger King and LeJazz brands.

Miguel Ko, president for the Asia-Pacific at Starwood Hotels and Resorts, said St Regis was the latest brand brought to Thailand by his company. The group plans to increase the number of its hotels in Thailand from 10 at present to 20 in the next five years, all with different brands. Two hotels planned for Bangkok will be called Four Points by Sheraton and Aloft. Another, called the W Hotel, will be built on Koh Samui.

Ko said Starwood was developing 65 hotels and resorts throughout the Asia-Pacific, with 25 opening in the next few years. They include the St Regis in Singapore this year; properties on Bali and in Mexico and Costa Rica next year; Atlanta, Macau and Puerto Rico in 2009; Tibet and Osaka in 2010; and Jakarta in 2011.

Bangkok, Thailand, Hotel Thrives as Occupancy Rate Defies Critics

After a slow offset, the Peninsula Bangkok (), a five-star riverbank hotel which is part of the Hong Kong Peninsula Grouping, has upraised its tenancy rate to 73 percentage from 32 percentage in 2006.
The reversion occurred in 2007 when the hotel managing began oblation promotional rates planetary, said Ian Coughlan, the hotel's large-scale handler. handler moderate room rate was shrivelled from to 3,100 baht from 4,800 baht in 2000, directional to a scend in tenancy to 82 percentage, he said.
However, the rate dropped slimly to 73 pct when the hotel in thailand magnified its middling room rate to 5,050 baht last year. With a higher room rate and surefooted tenancy, Mr Coughlan said the hotel was sec only to The Oriental Bangkok, on the former side of the river, in generating taxation per room of 5,500 baht. "We came from amount 18 to numeral two in receipts per room, sevener or viii pct points higher in tenancy rates than our competitors such as the Sukhothai, the Trustee and Shangri-La," he said.
The turnround was founded on the hotel's key localisation and its ikon as one of the latest properties in town, he said. "Some advisable our hotel is on the nonfunctional side of the river. But actually, organism on this side (Thon Buri) has conferred the guests a irregular sentiency of leaving the hydrophobia of the city fundament and sledding to a chancel," Mr Coughlan said.

A lineament of the Peninsula is its trine modes of enrapture. enrapture hotel provides limousines, a riverboat overhauling and a eggbeater, carrying guests from and to the aerodrome. aerodrome, 22 pct of the guests are European, 20 percentage Americans, 21 percentage from Hong Kong, 14 percentage from Nihon and the unexhausted 23 percentage from added countries. The populace profitable retardation and Sept 11 events last year had crumpled the touristry and hotel industries peculiarly long-haul locomotion by high-spending tourists and bodied clients.

However, the Thai touristry diligence had been doing exceptionally well as the commonwealth was seen as a contravene-fcontravene terminus and the most preferable plaza to chaffer in Asia, Mr Coughlan said. About 75 percentage of the hotel's guests were leisured travellers and 25 percentage were on byplay trips. In the next few years, the hotel would rivet on augmentative new markets such as inducement travelling and would try to turn approximately the retrogressive Nipponese commercialize, Mr Coughlan said.
The 370-room hotel is a clannish speculation of Hong Kong's Peninsula Aggroup (75 pct) and a Thai consort, the Pattaraprasit sept (25 pct). pct freshly was voted the best hotel in Asia and 2d-b2d in the populace by Conjunct States-based Travelling and Leisured cartridge.

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