Street wise:Hotel managers can't sit back and take it easy

Jan D Goessing, the new GM of the Mandarin Oriental, Bangkok, on his first official day admitted that he was pampered. Staying in the hotel while looking for an outside residence where he will live with his wife, he has been spoiled.

Still, on the first official day he arranged a tour with the hotel's engineer. This was not about inspecting the Wi-Fi network, but finding out how the boilers were working to send hot water to every room in the hotel. Goessing said: "I want to wrap my hands around the hotel."

The man who introduced many changes to Mandarin properties in Hawaii and Washington, DC is also plotting many possibilities for the legendary Bangkok hotel. While enjoying hotel food, in his head is how to boost the food-and-beverage income of each restaurant. Questions were raised as to who were the restaurants' regular patrons and who should be attracted.

Goessing is not unique. Hotel managers have to work harder these days, when Thailand's tourism is in a perfect storm due to domestic political turbulence, global economic recession and the flu pandemic. 

Arrivals have already fallen by 19 per cent for the first three months of the year, forcing the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) to look back at its 2009 forecasts, which were revised down to 12 million. Now the TAT is optimistic that the 14-million figure, the original target for 2009, will be achieved next year.

Amid bad news, mostly about hotels' financial condition, the good news is that the TAT has also improved its thinking. Rather than geographical segmentation, the agency's new marketing strategy looks more to tourists' travel intentions.

Travellers are put in five categories. While it's easy to lure tourists from Scandinavia in the "ready-to-travel" category, as they are inclined to travel and the least sensitive to political conflict, it is most difficult to attract those in the "highly-sensitive-travellers" category, such as Japanese, Koreans and those from Taiwan.

Extremely sensitive to Thailand's political instability, they also suffer from recession. That means customised campaigns are necessary.

Certainly, experienced hotel managers alone could not boost the tourism industry without strong leadership from the supervising agency. Now all the operators are wishing that someone could step in to end all the political turbulence and economic hardship, while it would be great if God could perform a miracle and divert the flu away to other planets.