Bangkok rooms should be capped
July 25, 2012 by Wanwisa Ngamsangchaikit
Filed under Hospitality, News, Thailand
BANGKOK, 25 July 2012: The city’s vast oversupply of hotel rooms needs to be capped by the government, according to Destination Asia (Thailand)’s managing director, Pornthip Hirunkate, who was speaking Tuesday at an evaluation seminar on the recent Rotary International Convention.
Industry players reviewed the performance of the convention that was held in Bangkok last May evaluating the benefits to the capital’s hotels and revenue earned from the event.
Ms Pornthip said Destination Asia worked as the Housing Bureau for the event, which selected 55 hotels and monitored room bookings and allotments.
Pornthip Hirunkate
“The hotel industry in Bangkok suffers from a vast supply over demand situation that should demand action by related organisations particularly the government to find a solution.”
She said there were 800 hotels with over 80,000 rooms available to visitors in Bangkok including guest houses and service apartments.
But it was the lack of a standard and consistent room rates quoted by hotels that caused problems for conference delegates. There were too many variations in rates in the market and this reduced the number of rooms booked through the official Rotary website to 20,996 compared to 37,004 for the 2011 venue New Orleans.
Venues since 2009 generated more bookings for the organiser’s website than Bangkok –31,782 in Montreal 2010 and 22,740 in Birmingham 2009.
The Destination Asia managing director blamed the decline on the availability of lower hotel rates for the conference hotels through other distribution channels that the Rotary website.
She argued that the hotel room rate was a key factor when hosting conventions as the rates had to be standardised whatever the distribution channel.
“Hoteliers must demonstrate unity and work together to share information and present room rates that are compatible with the product and also consistent whatever the distribution channel used.”
Despite the drop in hotel bookings through the Rotary website the convention attracted the highest attendance at 55,437 delegates representing Bt3,194 million in revenue.
There were 28,273 delegates and 27,164 accompanying delegates.
Thailand Convention and Exhibition Bureau together with Rotary clubs in Thailand worked on the project since 2004.
On 12 January 2007, TCEB signed a financial support contract for the 2012 Rotary International Convention that contracted support for the event at Bt270 million.
Rotary is a global humanitarian organisation with more than 1.2 million members in 34,000 Rotary clubs in over 200 countries and geographical areas.
I totally agree with Khun Pornthip’s comments. Can THA do something on this issue?
Often Hotel rooms booked through the official registration and booking authorities are slightly higher than if one books thro the internet or a known travel agent. Convention organisers should negotiate with hoteliers or with hoteliers associations and get the best rates for the delegates which under no circumstances will be higher than they would offer to others during the said period, otherwise the delegates will feel they have been ripped off.
Perhaps someone can explain why chains continue to build hotels in Bangkok like crazy. From my office at home I can see four hotels within a three block radius that did not exist a year ago. One just opened and another is still under construction. Dumping even more rooms onto an already-soft market simply encourages price instability. And where do all those chronically empty rooms go? To online booking services, of course, where where they are peddled off for less than their value. In the this just cheapens Bangkok’s image as a quality destination.