FRIDAY, March 29, 2024
nationthailand

Dusit International’s new group CEO sets growth strategy

Dusit International’s new group CEO sets growth strategy

Hospitality group Dusit International under the guidance of its new chief executive officer says it will focus on strengthening its business foundations for sustainable growth.

 

 

Suphajee Suthumpun, who officially became group CEO on January 1, said she would focus on enhancing the group’s human resources, its working processes, the property portfolio, technology, and the company’s financial capability. The goal is to boost the group’s top-line growth and to foster a solid foundation to support future growth. She said the group’s growth engines this year would be its existing core hotel and education businesses, but it was also seeking to expand its already diversified portfolio. The new growth engine will still be in the hospitality field.

Suphajee, former CEO of Thaicom, said that while the domestic market was still the Dusit group’s main revenue contributor, she wanted to see its overseas operations contributing more than half of total revenue within three years.

In the property field, Dusit International has 26 hotels, of which 10 are its own and the rest are those to which it provides management services. The new group CEO is considering whether Dusit should focus more on building or acquiring new hotels of its own or on providing management services. Dusit International has 40-50 properties in pipeline over the next three to five years in 21 countries. Of that total, deals on the development of more than 40 projects are already signed. They are in the locations such as Singapore, Australia, Vietnam, Oman and Saudi Arabia. In most cases, Dusit International will provide management services for these properties.

Suphajee said she would further enhance Dusit International’s already well-recognised hospitality brand and boost its human capital. She will also promote greater synergy between its hotel and education businesses.

With a strong background in information technology, she will utilise advanced technologies to improve the efficiency of the group’s management system.

"The IT infrastructure of our 26 existing hotels will be integrated to enable the group to leverage the customer database to develop effective marketing tools and customer satisfaction programmes," she said.

The group will also promote more online engagement with customers and use IT to give them better service. Prior to her present post, Suphajee was CEO of Thaicom. Earlier she served as general manager of Global Technology Services at IBM’s Asean headquarters in Singapore, and country general manager at IBM Thailand.

Suphajee said the Dusit group is studying which financial instruments it should leverage to improve its financial capacity.

Suphajee is the third group CEO in Dusit International’s 67-year history and the first from outside the founding family of Thanpuying Chanut Piyaoui. She succeeded Chanin Donavanik, now vice chairman and chairman of the executive committee.

Suphajee said that she and Chanin shared a common passion to bring the unique and well-known Thai hospitality to the world. They also share the same passion for human-capital development and education.

Dusit International’s portfolio includes hotels and resorts under four brands: Dusit Thani, Dusit Devarana, dusitD2 and DusitPrincess.

It also owns and operates Dusit Thani College, a private educational institution offering culinary and hospitality-management programmes in partnership with the Ecole Hoteliere de Lausanne; Le Cordon Bleu Dusit Culinary School, a joint venture with a renowned Paris-based institute; and the recently launched Dusit Thani Hotel School, Thailand’s |first "paperless" hospitality school based on Asean Common Competency Standards for Tourism Professionals.

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