Hotels
- Tourism News
Crunching the numbers on Phuket’s hotels – 2020
PHOTO: Travel 141 Bill Barnett from c9Hotelworks, crunches the numbers and reports on some challenges for Thailand’s largest island and most popular tourist destination, outside of Bangkok. Robust passenger arrivals in the second half of 2019 highlighted by growth in Indian tourists helped rebalance the island’s tourism sector, according to the C9 Hotelworks newly released Phuket Hotel Market Update (link…
- Tourism News
Hotel association wants rules on short-term rentals, home sharing
PHOTO: Airbnb and other accommodation-share businesses, plus a glut of newly opened hotels rooms across the country, is putting pressure on the traditional hotel model The Thai Hotels Association has again asked for a meeting with the Minister of the Interior to discuss the impact of short-term rentals and home sharing services like Airbnb on the domestic hotel business. The…
- Business News
Strong interest of foreign investors in Phuket’s resorts – JLL report
PHOTO: Dhawa Phuket “In the Asia Pacific, Phuket is one of the three hotel investment markets in the region that have been highlighted.” Buoyed by the rise of experience-driven travel and an affinity toward locally-inspired hotel offerings, resort assets remain a top target among investors. According to JLL Hotels & Hospitality’s Global Resort Report, resort sales accounted for 20% of…
- Tourism News
Chiang Mai hotels face a quiet end to 2019
PHOTO: Spice Roads Chiang Mai hotels are bracing for a quiet end to 2019, along with other Thai tourist hotspots, due to the strength of the baht, an over-supply of rooms and the growing popularity of home-sharing accommodations like Airbnb. Hoteliers in the northern city are also suffering the fall-out from the smoke haze crisis earlier in the year which…
- Business News
Centara signs up three more Phuket hotels
The surge of new properties continues in Phuket as the developers and Thai business leaders continue to show their confidence in Phuket as an international holiday destination. Thai hospitality group Centara Hotels and Resorts has entered into agreements to manage three hotels on Phuket’s northern west coast in Mai Khao. Two of the properties are currently operating, which are the…
- Tourism News
The China Syndrome, south east Asia’s tourism dilemma
PHOTO: Lunar New Year celebrations in Bali – Jakarta Post “When China sneezes, the rest of south east asia catches a cold.” From quiet markets in Malaysia, empty rooms in Hanoi’s hotels and barren beaches in Bali, China’s economic slowdown and weakening yuan are sending shockwaves felt across south east Asia’s vacation belt. Thailand is just one of many countries…
- Technology News
More than four million guests stayed in an Airbnb on August 10, 2019
“Airbnb has created an opportunity to meet people from all around the world.” – Pim, an Airbnb Host in Thailand Exactly 11 years since Airbnb was founded, the home-sharing hospitality company and ‘accommodation disrupters’ celebrated its biggest night ever, with more than 4 million people spending the night in an Airbnb listing on August 10, 2019. To date, there has…
- Tourism News
Greater Pattaya hosts hotel and tourism forum
On Thursday, September 5 a hotel and tourism market update event covering Greater Pattaya will be held at the Holiday Inn Pattaya. Jointly organised by industry leaders STR, Horwath HTL, C9 Hotelworks and the AMCHAM Thailand, the event will feature key hospitality operating and performance metrics. A special panel on the emerging trend of hotel residences will include senior executives from…
- Phuket News
Phuket’s wake-up call. The hard work starts here.
OPINION More hotels, a changing tourist mix, an exodus of expats and a decline in tourist numbers. Despite the new Tourism and Sports Minister pumping up the local tourism tyres during his visit last weekend, there’s a lot of hand-wringing and the sound of closing shop shutters around the tourist island of Phuket. To make things more complicated the situation…
- Tourism News
Phuket’s tourist bookings looking good – Diversity is the best option Part 3
by Guest Writer Over the past few months or so, we have read and noted much negativity in the world of tourism to Thailand’s most popular island of Phuket. As everyone is aware, May and June were particularly poor months for most tourism operators and hoteliers with several factors being mentioned to justify the drop which everyone is fully aware…
- Phuket News
Top 5 things Phuket hotel developers should know
by Bill Barnett from c9hotelworks.com Taking a 2020 view of Phuket’s hotel development pipeline that has now surpassed 15,000 new keys it’s hard not to be apprehensive. From a macro standpoint, the destination’s airlift and location are key success factors. But for the myriad cast of new and inexperienced hotel developers out there, perhaps a visit down Alice’s rabbit hole…
- Phuket News
Phuket leads the way in managed hotel residences
by Bill Barnett of c9hotelworks.com – Feature article “Hotel Residences – properties that sell individual units in the real estate market and operate as either hotels or else are branded by hospitality operators. Other often used terms are condotel, hotel branded residences and hospitality-led real estate.” Phuket’s love affair with hotel managed properties started in the late 1980’s with the…
- Tourism News
Phuket’s tourist evolution – Diversity is the best option Part 1
by Guest Writer Today’s guest writer has been managing resorts around Phuket for two decades and has represented his brand at international expos along with promotions for Phuket over the years. His knowledge is first-hand and steeped in local experience. He has asked to remain anonymous. At the end of the 1990’s into the early 2000’s Phuket saw the drastic…
- Tourism News
Unregistered hotels and lodgings told to get their paperwork in order, or close down
At least 5,000 of the country’s estimated 23,000 unregistered small hotels are expected to get their paperwork in order. The rush to action follows the announcement by the current government to register and comply with the Hotel Act, or be closed down. Most of Thailand’s busy tourist spots are rampant with small and illegal lodgings for tourists. Whilst the growth…
- Tourism News
Is Airbnb taking over the Thai hotel industry?
Airbnb is posing a less significant threat to hotels in Thailand than expected, but its influence in the longer term should not be underestimated, according to real estate company JLL Offering new alternatives to travellers, Airbnb is certainly taking some of the wind out of the sails of the traditional hotel accommodation model. However, findings from Jone Lang Lasalle (JLL) shows…
- Hua Hin News
Register your hotel within 30 days – Hua Hin unlicensed premises warned
FILE PHOTO 170 illegal hotel and resort operators in Hua Hin have been warned to register and obtain Hotel licences within a month or they will face jail or a fine. The Hua Hin district chief, Thanon Phanpipas, says the operators of unlicensed hotels and resorts must register within a month from May 16 or they would face a maximum…
- Tourism News
Chinese travellers heading to more non-Asian countries for holidays
More Chinese are now travelling further and taking in non-Asian destinations during this week’s Labour Day holidays, according to Hotelbeds, a leading hotel booking website. Monitoring holiday bookings made by Chinese, Hotelbeds said 10 to the top 30 destinations were outside of Asia compared with just three destinations a year earlier. The three day Labour Day holidays, starting on May…
- Koh Samui News
Raid on 18 foreign-owned Koh Samui hotels, owners arrested
FILE PHOTO Army, police and municipal officials have raided 18 hotels on Koh Samui claiming that they are illegally owned by foreigners. The hotels in questions are on a mountainside on the Gulf island, the second largest island in Thailand. Officials carried out the search and raids on Chaweng Noi Mountain in Moo 6 village in Tambon Bophut and found…
- World News
Sri Lanka attacks ‘retaliation for Christchurch’ – Government minister
The Islamist suicide bombings that killed 321 people, and injured many others in Sri Lanka at the weekend, are believed to have been carried out in revenge for last month’s attacks on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. Fifty people were shot dead on March 15 at two mosques in the South Island, New Zealand city by an avowed white…
- Business News
Phuket hotel watch – trends in 2019
by Bill Barnett of C9Hotelworks.com At the beginning of the year Phuket’s tourism and hotel sector was cautiously optimistic after a strong first half of 2018 and humbling second half. Key terms that kept popping up were Mainland Chinese, Thai Baht Appreciation, Elections and Supply Concerns. So today, with five months of performance under the belt in 2019 what are…
- Bangkok News
Reflections #2 – Thailand Tourism Forum – ‘Chindia Tourism’
‘CHINDIAN’ Tourists – Same Same or Different? by Wimintra Raj – hotelintel.co If you’re running a hotel or any business related to the local tourism industry in Thailand, this is an article you need to read, then read again. It was just one of the many presentations at the annual Thailand Tourism Forum held in Bangkok recently. “For the third…
- Thailand News
Hotel room rates remain stagnant whilst Airbnb continues to grow in Thailand
PHOTO: Airbnb As the head-scratching continues as to why traveller aren’t drinking expensive beers in girlie bars and avoiding ‘traditional’ tourist haunts, Airbnb has a record year in Thailand, signaling more problems for the hotel business as tourists seek alternative holiday experiences. As the number of guests continues to trend upwards with more than 1.65 million inbound Airbnb guests to…
- Chiang Mai News
Chiang Mai official says the hotel sell-off is “because there were too many tourists”
PHOTO: This hotel is not for sale! Manager Online is claiming that a senior tourism official in Chiang Mai says the reason people want to sell hotels in the northern city is not because there are so few Chinese tourists now. It is because there are so many. Chiang Mai’s former tourism industry chief Pornchai Jitranawasathian, who now runs the…
