The Siam City Hotel

Author: Keiko Maezawa, Lali Kitimahakun

In the morning of February 28th, we woke up at the Siam City Hotel full of excitement and joyfulness. After finishing a delicious breakfast, we conglomerated in the meeting room.

There, professor Sherri Kimes, Mr. Jason Friedman, a Cornelian General Manager of the Siam City Hotel, and Khun Marisa Sukosol, the owner of the Siam Hotel, were greeting us with a warm welcome. We were amazed that Mr. Jason greeted us with warm handshake to everyone.

Firstly, Mr. Jason nicely introduced himself and told about his professional experiences. He has a diversified hospitality experience ranging from Bali, Thailand, Vietnam, and Hong Kong. He mentioned that there are many opportunities in Asia, yet a job-hunting in Asia is getting difficult year by year.

Secondly, Khun Marison Sokosol introduced herself and presented the story of the Siam City Hotel. We were all surprised because she started her presentation with a song. And itwas amazingly beautiful. She explained that Brand is music and not science. Later, she showed the video from Youtube website, regarding the marketing advertisement and branding campaign of United Airlines. United Airlines linked its airline services with caring beloved clients and enhancing a strong connection. She pointed out that Branding is “heart thinking”. In other words, Branding is emotional rather than mere logical thinking.

She also showed us the butterfly picture. “Like a larva changing to a butterfly”, Ms. Marisa explained the Siam City Hotel is under rebranding and under construction. She gave us an idea that branding increases over time by adding value of brand such as Four Seasons, Mandarin Oriental, and Nike. Unlike depreciated asset, brands can be appreciated by tangible and intangible services with functional and emotional benefit.

It was great to see her presentation because it was all about rebranding and marketing that she actually went through. She renamed the Siam City Hotel to the Sukosol Hotel as the name of Siam is too generic. The Siam City Hotel is one of all four properties in the Sukosol family, namely The Siam, Siam Bayshore Pattaya, and Siam Bayview Pattaya. We all understood that the Sukosol family has a consolidate position in Thailand.

After the presentation by Ms. Marisa, we had a chance to talk with Mr. Jason, Ms. Marisa, Mr. Vishnu Bangsomboon, and Ms. Kulrisa Suriyamongkol. They provided small refreshments for us including some Thai traditional snacks. We were all excited about the new information that Marisa provided to us because it was just a day before our presentation. Most classmates were trying to get more information from hotel side for the presentation. Due to the long discussion time, we skipped going to the hotel tour.

 

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Four Seasons Hotel & The Muse Hotel

Author: Kay & Alicia

 

After great speech and great lunch at Agoda, we walked toward to our next Hotel, Four Seasons. This hotel used to be Peninsula, the decoration is very luxury but full of local characteristics. Through this tour, we understand that how Four Seasons takes care of its employees. It regards employees as the most important investment to generate high customer satisfaction as well as high revenue. It was a pity that due to high occupancy in Four Seasons on the day we visited, we did not have chance to show room.

The Wall mural was painting by a famous artist, who passed away before the work could be completed, and his daughter and students completed the work. The entire art piece took 10 years to complete.

 

We also visit its spa. The spa is out sourcing but as elegant and high class as Four Seasons. We could see that when such a luxury brand picks its partners, it would consider the quality as well. The SPA by Mspa, used two types of product. One is organic local brand; the other is the leading British spa brand, Elemis. The Spa was surround by Thai Architecture and providing Suite Massage, Poolside Massage and In-Room Massage.

 

Spice Market, voted “Most delicious Thai restaurant in Bangkok”.

All the restaurants are elegant and customers need to book in advanced to have a seat and enjoy their meal. One of the most popular restaurants might be its Thai cuisine restaurant, which is the one that Four Seasons would not renovate because tons of old customers love it and Four Seasons wants to keep the valuable memory to its customers.

 

Madison, the steak house is designed by restaurants designer, Tony Chi, provide unique and elegant dining experience.

 

Of course, we cannot miss the back of house.

 

 

 

 

After a short visit to Four Seasons, we walked to the new opened designed Hotel, The Muse.

 

The guestroom of the Muse used lavender purple, black, dark brown and white as theme.  It gives warm and relaxes feeling once you step into the room.  How it put modern and classic elements together in detail are remain in my memory.

For example, the room number was inked on the leather and attached outside of the door.  The shampoo/shower gel/lotion are putted in a white ceramic container with silver cap. It’s very beautiful property and I could image how female guests will be amazed while staying in the hotel. The strong France atmosphere provides Muse another feeling and emotion generating, and differentiates it from other American chain brands.

 

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Agoda

Authors: Kay & Alicia

 

Visiting Agoda, one of the most famous and biggest online travel agents in Asia, is a valuable experience for all students. Since the relationship between travel agents and hotels are closely related, but not many of us have working experience in an OTA, this corporate visit could be one of the best chances to roughly know how an OTA works with a hotel property.

 

 

Agoda is the leading OTA in Asia. Unlike traditional OTAs, which always want to have lower price from hotels, leading to price competition, especially since Agoda regards itself as hotels’ partner. As a part of Priceline, Agoda has global resources to offer good prices to consumers as well as provide quality service to hotels.

 

                     

 

The size of Agoda’s office was way more than we thought. There are at least 10 people work in each department, not to mention some departments need to deal with a huge amount of data and analyze all the information. According to the director, the IT department might be the most important department in Agoda. Though “IT department” sounds like a hardware or software problem-solving department, in Agoda, it handles one of the most important tasks – information collection. After collecting information from hotels or websites, IT departments would pass this information to different departments to do further analysis, such as consumer behavior or marketing analysis. By testing different font, color, or pictures arrangement on website, Agoda accumulates know-how related to consumer behavior, making it predominate the Asia market. During our tour, we got to know of a small secret- most of consumers prefer to press “book it now” button when the button is blue. However, such kind of detailed research is not the job that hotels would do by themselves.

 

 

Robert Rosenstein, the founder and CEO gave  us a speech about how he found Agoda and about the further acquisition of the company by Priceline.com in 2007. He shared valuable experience about how Agoda transformed itself from a negative-profit company to becoming the biggest booking website in Asia.  Interestingly, he shared how Agoda aligned with the hotel in terms of rate integrity and manages risk for the hotel.  Additionally, one team will handle hotels rate control while frequently checking on the rates at hotel’s website to ensure that customers of Agoda are given a fair price.

 

 

The baseline strategy is essential to maintaining a  mutually benefiting relationship between Agoda and participating hotels. Instead of charging fixed commission rates, Agoda is able to adjust its commission rate based on seasonal conditions, and further lowering rates in peak seasons to drive more demand. Thus, Agoda becomes not only a basic online travel agency that only maintains relationship with customers, but also provides necessary support to the hotels. At the same time, Agoda is continuously growing.

 

From this corporate visit, we also understood that, compared to global chain hotels, independent hotels heavily rely on OTAs.  Since independent hotels lack certain necessary resources, OTAs could provide relevant market information, analysis, and competitors’ price information to independent hotels. Therefore, for independent hotels, cooperating with OTAs as Agoda would be a good way to help first increase hotel awareness and increase booking.

 

Multi-culture and opened working environment might be another key point of Agoda. We could see that the staff are not only local people, but also Asian, European, and American. The multi-culture working environment of Agoda in Bangkok provides various services within an interesting working environment. Besides, a multi-cultural environment, an open working atmosphere could also help staff to exchange information quickly and generate more creative ideas, which are the core value of Agoda. Furthermore, the innovative strategies employed by Agoda offered us distinct insight into this ever growing space within the hospitality industry!

 

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Reception and Dinner at the Novotel

Author: lmh253@cornell.edu

 

Our first official day in Bangkok came to a delicious and entertaining end with a pool side reception and dinner at the Novotel Siam Square. Greeting by alumni and hoteliers, the evening kicked off with a pool side reception that included delicious appetizers and refreshing beverages.

 

 

During the reception, students were able to network and catch up with one another after spending the last two months apart. Since winter internships took place all across Asia, it was very interesting to hear about the different experiences that everyone had. What a perfect way to unwind after running around Bangkok all day!

 

After the reception, we were taken into a function room where we watched an informative and humorous presentation on the tourism industry in Bangkok. While our presenter took a satirical approach to discussing tourism and crisis in Thailand, his message was clear: Thailand has endured challenges and setbacks that few countries would have survived.  Thailand is a highly resilient nation that will likely continue to be faced with monumental challenges. Aside from political instability and natural disasters, Bangkok is currently faced with a fierce price war in the hotel industry. Many properties seem to be faced with the prisoner’s dilemma: should they lower their rates just like everyone else? Or should they try to ride it out and hope the industry leaders will band together and weather the storm?

 

The solution posed by our presenter was that Thailand will only witness the ADR of other top Asian tourist destinations if the nation as a whole demonstrates its ability to be innovative. The tourism board has been using the same photos and same tactics to encourage tourism for the last decade. They need to step up their game and bring some new, fresh, and innovative to the table. Furthermore, the leaders in the industry need to band together to successfully overcome the price war taking place in the Bangkok market.

 

After the presentation, our evening wrapped up with a delicious five course meal.

 

 

 

 

After eating all of that delicious food, we were all incredibly stuffed. The reception and dinner at the Novotel was an excellent representation of Thai hospitality and truly demonstrated the power of the Cornell network. After experiencing such fantastic hospitality, I’m sure each of us will be more than willing to host students and alumni in the future.