Category Archives: Business

* Indonesia hoteliers eye emerging middle class

Posted on by Suzana

By Susan Cunningham
HotelNewsNow.com correspondent

BANGKOK—Fueled by steady economic growth exceeding 6% annually, the rise of Indonesia’s middle class and its impact on the hotel landscape were prominent themes at Travel Trends’ No Vacancy conference in Bangkok last week.

Of the 248 million people in Indonesia, approximately 20%–50 million–now belong to the middle class, said Sonia Kapoor, client service director for Nielsen Singapore. Now compiling between $4 and $20 each day to save or spend on leisure activities, members of this group will comprise 50% of the population by 2030, she predicted.

The number of new hotels being built or in the pipeline is unknown. The breakdown of travelers also is hazy, but Scott Blume, group CEO of PT Raja Kumar International, provided an estimate: “At least 25% is probably business travel and the travelers are staying in the 3- to 3-and-a-half-star range hotels. That’s 400,000 to 500,000 rupiah, or about $40.” … MORE

* Deals and developments in Sri Lanka

Posted on by Suzana
Cliff-side Kandalama Hotel (Aitken Spence), a Bawa design in central Sri Lanka

Geoffrey Bawa-designed Heritance Kandalama in Cultural Triangle

Sri Lanka’s hotels have been far from the international spotlight for 30 years, but the country accumulated a sizable inventory during the 1960s and 1970s. More than 500 Sri Lankan hotels and other types of lodging are listed on online booking sites. There are approximately 70 listed just for the Bentota-Kalutara beach strip southwest of Colombo.

Here are some companies that have announced sizable investments for renovations or new builds since the end of the country’s civil war in 2010.

Jetwing Hotels Limited

Jetwing Hotels will build six hotels by 2014, adding to its existing stable of 12, according to Jetwing Chairman Hiran Cooray. Forty-year old Jetwing, which also runs outbound tours, already operates the largest number of hotels in the country with a total of approximately 520 rooms. Cooray said Jetwing will spend $18 million … more

* BlackBerry’s days are numbered

Posted on by Suzana

Business Report Thailand, June 2011

If you believe the most optimistic estimates floating around, there are 1.5 million smartphones in use in Thailand and 500,000 of them are BlackBerrys.

Software developers and telecom staff doubt there are quite that many smartphones or BlackBerrys. Perhaps there are only 1 million smartphone users. But observers all agree on one point: BlackBerrys are by far the most popular smartphone in Thailand. (RIM’s office in Singapore declined to estimate and doesn’t yet have an office in Thailand).

Interest in developing apps for the BlackBerry is nonetheless slender. If a company is committed to creating an application for all operating systems, it will get to BlackBerry eventually, but that isn’t the first or even second system in the queue.


The skepticism about BlackBerry’s future stems stems partly from the kludginess of the operating system, which developers and analysts worldwide think will soon be outpaced by the superior iPhone, Android and Windows 7.

Then there are the reasons BlackBerry has done so well in Thailand as well as Indonesia. Prices for a handset are below THB 10,000 on the grey market, which is at least half the price of an iPhone and about the same as local smartphone brand Spriing and Taiwan’s HTC.

The clincher for Thai and Indonesian consumers has been the reasonable prepaid monthly packages that include unlimited text messages. In Thailand a package costs less than THB 600 per month. Unlike SMS messages, these are conveyed via the internet but otherwise BlackBerry users tend not to browse the Web or use the other internet-enabled features that telecom operators would so dearly love to charge for.

Users of other smartphone brands and operating systems in Thailand probably don’t use many of their internet options either.

Many of BlackBerry’s most visible users, such as students and female office workers, are a fickle lot. “Some say that Thais change their mobile phone every eight months,” said Freewill FX’s Nuttapon Boonpinon. Moreover, loyalty to the BlackBerry phone hasn’t transferred … MORE

This was a sidebar accompanying a cover story I wrote on Thai smartphone app developers. It appeared in the June 2011 issue of Business Report Thailand. Fast Company in April 2012 ran an analysis of BlackBerry’s decline followed by more interesting comments from Mark Lambert and others. Note that the analysis is written by a marketing man indirectly flogging his services. Then there’s the stock analyst’s sobering perspective. WSJ‘s July 2012 tale of Nokia’s decline is interesting too.

* Coupon clash

Posted on by Suzana

By Susan Cunningham
Southeast Asia Globe

As discount deal websites explode in the region, a Thai company shows how it’s done.

Deep-discount deal sites have been surging throughout the United States and Europe for almost three years, but they were late off the starting blocks in Southeast Asia – arriving only in mid 2010. Since then, they have moved and morphed, bought and sold themselves.

In June 2010, when Tom Srivorakul and his two younger brothers launched Ensogo, the first deal website in Thailand, they employed five people and had a single offer: a 60% discount at ice cream chain iBerry.

A year later, when Ensogo was bought for an undisclosed sum by LivingSocial–the second-largest US deal company with a monthly revenue of $50m as of the start of this year–the start-up had 430 employees, 17 city sites in Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia and more than two million subscribers to its daily discount deal e-letter … MORE