Belief checks in for hotel success against the odds

Determined to make a better living for him and his family than he could from the sale of lottery tickets, Anan gradually built up the operation until it was worth than Bt60 million in 2009 – when he was only 31.
Further expansion has left him running a 30-room resort and hotel and this month he is set to open a cafe in a bid generate further growth next year.
“I faced a bad turn in life when I lost my sight at just 5 years of ago, and my family also were poor,” said Anan, 40, in an interview with The Nation. “But I tried to do everything that I could to improve the circumstances for my family and myself, and this included selling lottery tickets when I still a child until I was able to establish my own business.”
In addition to the lottery sales, Anan also took on extra work as a musician in a pub at night, and he was a member of a national team in athletics for the disabled.
“I worked at all kinds of jobs in an effort to generate income for some 10 years until I had enough savings to buy 600 square wah of land in the Khum Klao area of Minburi district.
“Then I decided to use my savings to develop nine huts in a resort designed for everybody to enjoy, but especially disable people and the elderly,” he said of his Khum Klao Teak Hut resort.”
For this initial investment, Anan said he had to draw on his savings to develop the business as most of the commercial banks were wary of lending to him due to his blindness.
However, when Anan demonstrated some success in the running the business, he gained a loan from Krung Thai Bank. The Bt2 million loan helped him to expand his resort from nine huts with the addition of the 30-room hotel on the site.
After gaining the first loan, Anan further expanded the business by developing a facility around the hotel that, combined, took the investment to as much as Bt40 million.
Currently, the hotel business generates an average of Bt200,000 a month, even as the national economy has recorded only moderate growth this year.
Under his investment expansion, Anan has built a caf? in front of the hotel that is due to open on November 19. 
The move comes as part of a drive to boost business growth in the rest of rest of this year and into the next.
“Although I am blind, I can do business because of my firm belief in my ability to improve the situation of my family,” Anan said.
“I can do everything that other people can do, but I just have to work harder than other people to achieve this. “I proved to myself that I could succeed and this gave the bank the confidence to provide a loan to me, in order for me to drive the business forward.”