Competition changing the face of hospitality sector
When I was young, I remember Pattaya being the favourite getaway for Bangkok residents.
Our large family would rent a whole house and stay there for the weekend. The resort city had several bungalows for smaller families and perhaps a few low-rise hotels, and that was it.
Now, with the world economy growing by leaps and bounds, the tourism industry in Thailand is expanding to welcome more and more foreign travellers. Pattaya, along with other popular tourist destinations such as Bangkok and Chiang Mai, as well as the resort islands of Samui and Phuket have changed tremendously.
The hospitality industry in most cities has expanded hugely and the market focus has shifted from local people to foreigners because of better profits. Many hotel chains aim to capture the high-end market, because its members are richer and have better spending power.
Thailand’s hospitality market has been targeting this market for quite some time, which is why most of our cities are filled with four and five-star hotels.
Apart from the many new hotel chains that seem to be popping up over the past few years, there are also a growing number of service apartments, boutique hotels, business hotels, privately owned hotels and guesthouses filling up the market.
Competition in the hospitality sector is becoming so fierce that room rates continue going down. In fact, some hotels have even closed down because they cannot survive in this competitive environment.
Nowadays, in order to survive, many hotels have to find new selling points, rebrand themselves, cut down on operating costs, come up with more money-making activities and expand their market share.
It will be exciting to see what ideas new hotels come up with in response to the current world trends – perhaps a super green hotel or maybe a budget five-star hotel with one staff member?
Whatever this groundbreaking idea is, hotel design and typology will certainly have to evolve. Travellers nowadays will not settle for just another bungalow or regular hotel room, which is why places I stayed at when I was young are disappearing so fast.
