Siam Paragon unaffected by drop in Thais' spending power

Mayuree Chaipromprasith, senior vice president for business promotion of Siam Piwat Co, said spending per head by holders of its Platinum cards at Siam Paragon rose by 40 per cent during the first half of this year, compared with the same period in 2014.

She said Siam Paragon offered free parking to customers who have accumulated Bt1.2 million in purchases, and every day about 20 shoppers applied for this privilege.

Purchases by Thai customers dropped in April because of the long holidays, with many people travelling overseas, but this was offset by foreign tourists. Purchases started to pick up again in May, she said.

Buoyed by the first-half performance, Siam Paragon now targets 60-per-cent growth in spending per head for the whole year.

Siam Paragon currently has about 20,000 Platinum card members, who are typically high-income and regular shoppers.

Mayuree said Siam Paragon and Siam Center, also owned by Siam Piwat, had witnessed a significant rise of foreign shoppers, especially Chinese, who arrived in Bangkok in large numbers in April during the Songkran Festival. Luxury brands and foods are among the favourite items for foreign shoppers at the two shopping plazas. Their average spending per head is about Bt10,000.

Siam Piwat targets the number of foreign shoppers at its two malls to increase by 25 per cent this year, and their total spending to rise by at least 15 per cent.

For the second half of 2015, the company has devised a more proactive marketing strategy with a budget of more than Bt60 million to attract a larger number of foreign tourists, she said.

At present, Siam Paragon and Siam Center welcome 150,000-200,000 visitors a day, 30 per cent of whom are foreigners. This year’s top sources of foreign shoppers are expected to be Hong Kong, mainland China, India, the United Arab Emirates and Japan.

Official figures show the number of foreign tourists visiting Thailand from January to May reached 12.4 million, rising by nearly 25 per cent from a year ago. Their total spending was estimated at Bt592.9 billion, up 25.13 per cent from the same period of 2014.

As part of its campaign to attract more foreign tourists, Siam Piwat yesterday announced that it had joined with GlobePass, an alliance of financial institutions in the Asia-Pacific region, and Thai Airways International to launch "World-Class Privileges" exclusively to GlobePass members and THAI passengers during the remaining months of the year. Considering GlobePass’s 30-million membership base, the campaign is the largest ever for Siam Piwat, she said.

The campaign covers Thai Airways customers who travel to or from nine places – Japan, South Korea, mainland China, Taiwan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines – as well as Asia-Pacific GlobePass members, who total 33 million people from seven countries holding credit cards issued by eight banks.

Siam Piwat has also partnered with SiXT Thailand to become the first shopping mall in the country to offer a free one-way limousine trip to a destination up to 30 kilometres away to shoppers who spend Bt50,000 or a day at one or both of the two shopping centres. The amount is reduced to Bt30,000 for GlobePass members.