Thread: Thailand to get high quality tourists due to boutique hotels

Hat to come to Bangkok for a day and night to take my lovely better half, Mrs Hat, to the airport as she is going home for a few weeks (sick and tired of Thailand and her Mum's not well) and we are staying in a 'boutique hotel tonight.

Lovely place, nicer ambience than a hotel, stylish furnishings. It's a bit out of the way, but very nice . . . and quite reasonable.

Not sure if I can do this, but have a look:

Welcome to Siam Society Hotel and Resort

Having thought about this for a few days, there's plenty of "price morons" to cultivate. Why wouldn't Thailand give 'er a go?

My dad, love him to bits, visited in August. Compared every single meal, airfare, hotel, souvinier, taxi fare, tip and bottle of water to what it might have cost him back home.

He left thinking he'd struk a bargain everywhere. I waved goodbye thinking of all the jubilant Thais he left in his wake -- and that I will only take him to Phuket next time and not fcuk up my pristine little paradise.

While Thais understand the disparity between monied and poor within their borders, they seem to assume any fat white man wearing shorts, sweating heavily and carrying a camera is an opportunity.

They're right.

Originally Posted by Texpat

Thais are relative Neandrathals when it comes to customer service. They routinely fuck up every billing question, service request, order change, information query, why should I believe their boutique "anything" would be any different.

I agree. I could care less that the hotel lobby looks like an interior decorator's showroom (a not very imaginative interior decorator I should add - ever noticed how these places tend to all look the same)? How about delivering some decent customer service, starting with the basic premise that the staff are there to wait on the customers, not the other way around.

In fact, I think the customer service in a lot of these so-called boutique hotels is worse than your average budget/mid-range hotel. There's a lot of wanna-bes trying to cash in on this trend and they simply don't know what they're doing.

One of my pet peeves is the food - this is one area where these kinds of places could really shine. But chances are you're still gonna get the same steam-table breakfast with instant coffee, rubbery eggs, cheapo ham and white bread toast.

Originally Posted by Texpat

revenue from foreign visitors met the target of 547 billion baht.

Wonder what percentage of their GDP this represents?

Abot 11%.