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Published on October 30, 2007

 Total renovations are more than half-complete at the Amari Atrium Hotel on New Phetchaburi Road.

The extensive refit is an effort to capture more of the lucrative corporate and meetings, incentives, conventions and exhibitions (MICE) market, brought considerably closer by the Airport Rail Link project joining Makkasan and Suvarnabhumi Airport.

General manager Marco Saxer said the Amari Atrium was strategically located close to the Airport Rail Link station, giving it enhanced potential to expand its corporate and MICE business. At present, the hotel's guests are 70-per-cent leisure visitors and 30-per-cent corporate clients.

"We have spent a huge budget to renovate the entire hotel. This will be complete in the next one or two years. Currently, renovations are complete on more than half of the 600 rooms, as well as major areas, including the lobby, the coffee shop and function rooms," Saxer said.

The ballroom and all function rooms now include state-of-the-art audio-visual equipment, with a computerised sound system, projection and multimedia capacity. High-speed wireless broadband-Internet connections operate throughout.

Moreover, the Amari Atrium has been awarded an "eco-rating" of five green leaves by environmental group Audubon International. It is a smoke-free hotel - even in the rooms - and staff are also encouraged to quit.

And going beyond renovating just its rooms and facilities, the hotel requires all staff to attend intensive training courses, in order to improve operations and customer care.

Saxer said that in the low season, the hotel had faced a sharp drop in the number of European visitors. However, Italian and Spanish guests increased significantly during the Northern Hemisphere's summer season. India is proving to be a very strong market, and the number of Russian guests is growing.

Despite the renovations, the Amari Atrium is forecasting 70-per-cent occupancy this year, compared with 80 per cent last year.

Saxer said the growing number of new hotels in Bangkok meant intense competition during the low season. But in the high season, established hotels will take advantage of peak numbers of European visitors, while newcomers will have to work hard to attract them.

He believes over the next two years there will be 6,000 additional hotel rooms available in Bangkok for tourists and business people, excluding boutique hotels and serviced apartments. This could make it difficult for hotels to find skilled staff, because of a shortage of sales and marketing personnel, qualified maintenance engineers and even European chefs.

Patcharee Lueng-uthai, The Nation