The Renaissance Ratchaprasong Has a Soft Opening
The Renaissance Bangkok Ratchaprasong Hotel has now opened. Renaissance is in the Marriott stable of brands.
The property, located on Ploenchit Road next to the Maneeya Centre office building, has 275 Rooms, 58 suites and 19,999 square metres of meeting space.
A quick check on their reservation website showed a room rate of 5,999 baht for one night on February 3rd for a deluxe 37 square metre room.
By comparison the following rates were being offered by competing properties nearby.
In the same area the following serviced apartments were offering these daily rates.
There are numerous other hotels under construction within one kilometer of the Renaissance including the Kempiniski at Siam Paragon, St. Regis on Rajdamri, M Gallery Langusan, the Okura at Park Ventures and Novotel on the corner of Ploenchit and Soi Ruam Rudee.
We expect that there will be a 30% increase in Bangkok hotel rooms over the next three years.
We will need to see a similar increase in business and leisure travel in order for hotels to be able to increase room rates.
Taking into account economic conditions in the long haul feeder markets in Europe and the US, we cannot see a big upswing in visitors from these destinations.
Maybe the surprise card will be visitors from India and China but to date Thailand has not performed well in attracting Chinese tourists.
In the absence of a significant increase in arrivals the outlook for the Bangkok hotel industry is going to be increased competition with reduced rates and occupancy. Surprisingly there are still plans to develop even more hotels than those already under construction.
