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Published on November 5, 2007

Absolute Group is rolling out more vacation clubs and hotels for international holidaymakers.

Chairman Bryan Lunt said last week that his group had invested Bt500 million in vacation clubs and hotels since 2004, before the tsunami ravaged Phuket and the Andaman coast.

The group took over two hotels in Phuket - the Absolute Sea Pearl Phuket and most recently the Patong Grandville - and runs them as time-share or vacation clubs.

It entered into long-term leases for blocks of rooms from hotels and condominiums in Pattaya and Samui and offers vacation-club exchange opportunities for members in Bangkok, Kanchanaburi and Chiang Mai.

A new project called the Absolute Sea Pearl Villas & Spa Resort will be unveiled in Phuket next month. Two or three projects are on the drawing board for the next few years.

"I expect revenue to be Bt300 million-Bt350 million this year and to jump by 25 per cent in 2008 with the additional properties," Lunt said.

The project with 70-80 villas and condominiums will require about Bt700 million. It is a joint venture with celebrity tennis star and British millionaire David Lloyd. This will be Lloyd's first resort in Asia and the first of 10 coming to the region under this new brand and concept. Lloyd's first resort - in Barbados in the Caribbean - is called the Sugar Hills Barbados.

Absolute is selling 30-year vacation memberships for Bt100,000-Bt700,000, based on season and unit size.

"We are focusing on the English-speaking market, particularly the US, UK, Australia and New Zealand, as well as Russia, Germany, China and soon Thailand," Lunt said.

The group plans to launch more flexible conditions for future local vacation-club members by offering them options for shorter periods of stay.

The vacation-club business particularly in Phuket will keep growing dramatically despite some negative factors such as political uncertainty, soaring oil prices and the economic slowdown, he said.

"Many hotels and resorts in Phuket are shifting their vacant rooms to the time-share business, so competition is expected to be tougher soon," he added.

The group recently launched a free magazine, Absolute Phuket, with a circulation of 15,000 every two months. It will be introduced in Samui next month and turned into a national magazine in April for wider distribution, including in Bangkok, Pattaya and Chiang Mai.

Hutchison & Co Trust Co, established in London, has been the trustee for Absolute vacation clubs since the beginning.

Lunt started his career in the vacation-ownership industry in 1984 on Spain's Canary Islands. After working in Tenerife for several years, he took up a marketing position at a prime beachfront resort in the Algarve, Portugal.

He went back to Tenerife as the manager of more than 150 marketing staff generating over 100 qualified tours per day, seven days a week, in 10 different languages, and kept 10 sales teams and hundreds of customers happy.

Being a forward thinker, Lunt believes marketing should drive sales, and naturally he began to move into sales management. He developed the Russian market with a team of highly tuned Russian sales professionals under his baton. Under his entrepreneurship and professionalism, results were positive and the team generated more than US$25 million (Bt850 million) of sales in its first year.

With almost a combined 50 years of experience in the timeshare industry, Lunt and his two close friends, Vladimir Suche-van and Svetlana Kostromitina, formed a business under the Royale Marketing brand in 1998. The synergy has continued and Suchevan and Kostromitina remain directors and shareholders of now a group of companies rebranded as Absolute Group.

The group employs in excess of 750 staff and has a policy simply to do it right from the very start.

Driven by challenges, he has steered the company to record growth through the efforts and hard work of the directors and the entire staff.

With Lunt's endless drive and entrepreneurship, the company has expanded from its conception in Tenerife to mainland Spain followed by Moscow, Kiev, Pattaya, Phuket, Samui, Turkey, Barcelona, Beijing and Sanya in China, Hong Kong and most recently, Khabarovsk in Russia.

Lunt has a huge vision of Asia and is determined to leverage on the enormous potential that the market has displayed to the world.

The Brit is a family man and lives in Hong Kong. As chairman of Absolute Group, he has demonstrated the benefits of vacation ownership to already more than 20,000 families worldwide.

Suchat Sritama

 The Nation

PHUKET