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Published on July 31, 2007

Although his Hong Kong-based family has conducted business in Thailand for about 20 years, Ben Cha is excited about the challenging opportunity he has been given.

Cha 32, is a Stanford Business School graduate and director of HKR Asia-Pacific International, a subsidiary of Hong Kong Stock Exchange-listed HKR International.

"My family has been active in Thailand since 1988, when we began building the Sukhothai Hotel," he said.

During the past two decades, Cha said his family and the company have kept a relatively low profile in Thailand, operating the successful five-star Sukhothai Hotel on Sathorn Road and developing several small properties. Currently, Cha is in charge of developing 196 ultra-high-end condominium units on 7 rai of property attached to the Sukhothai.

"This project will be one of the most high-profile things the family has done in Thailand in the past five or six years," he said.

Cha has been well trained with both the family company and his previous work experience for the Mandarin Oriental Hotel group.

"My first job after my undergraduate degree was as a member of the Mandarin's hotel-development group in 1995," he said.

During his Mandarin stint, Cha worked on three major hotel projects - in China, Tokyo and New York City. "The two China projects weren't successful, but the Tokyo Mandarin Oriental and the New York Mandarin Oriental were opened about three years ago," he said.

After returning to business school at Stanford University from 1999-2001, Cha joined the family business, HKR International in Hong Kong.

"During the past six years, we built hotels and residential units in Hong Kong, China and Singapore," he said.

HKR International has total assets of about 15.607 billion Hong Kong dollars (Bt67.22 billion), sales of $2.835 billion and a net profit of almost $1.5 billion as of March 31, the end of the company's fiscal 2007.

One of Cha's biggest challenges in ramping up HKR's Thai operations has been to attract talented people for his Sukhothai Residences and other property-development projects.

"Getting good people has been the biggest challenge, and we have had to educate them about HKR," he said.

He said the Thai public was very familiar with the Sukhothai Hotel but did not know HKR was also a large property developer in Hong Kong and the region.

"We've had to educate people on what we've done and that we are real developers," he said.

Although the company has not been a high-profile operator, Cha said that over the past two decades, the HKR Group had made property investments in Rayong, Phuket, Phang Nga and Bangkok.

With the Sukhothai Residences now fully underway, Cha has spent much of the past year recruiting project managers, monitoring and evaluation managers, cost managers and internal staff for the development project.

"We have a robust hotel-management team, but we have had to recruit a whole new development team," he said.

His Thai operations also receive tremendous managerial support from Hong Kong headquarters.

"The project's Director of Sales and Marketing from Hong Kong has sold more than US$3 billion (Bt101 billion) of real estate during her 15-year career, and the project director from Hong Kong has developed more than 5 million square feet [465,000 square metres] of property in the region," he said.

Cha said he spent much of his time communicating to his staff and the market that HKR was fully committed to building lifestyle-driven high-end niche-market real-estate projects in Thailand.

"This means that all of our residential projects will be enhanced by lifestyle-enhancing amenities, including hotels, food and beverage facilities, clubs and marinas and golf clubs when possible," he said.

Cha said HKR in Thailand would focus on bringing on-stream one or two new projects a year.

"We want to be known for lifestyle-driven high-end developments," he said.

Cha said that personally, he was gratified he could help the family establish this new operating platform in Thailand.

"It's a very unique opportunity," he said.

He added that over time, the family was fast becoming shareholders rather than managers and operators.

"We are gradually professionalising all our businesses."