Another Name Change

As part of a worldwide re-positioning Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza Bangkok has recently dropped the Holiday Inn tag from its name and is now known as Crowne Plaza Bangkok.

General Manger Michael Turner said that the property would be positioned as an upscale product for both the business and leisure sector. He explained that Crowne Plaza was now an established stand alone brand of the Six Continents company, describing the Bangkok hotel's repositioning as an important step "It means that we have higher standards of service" he said, "and quality to live up to."

The refurbishment project will start in June 2002 with the Plaza Tower's 385 rooms being gutted and then refurbished on a floor-by-floor basis. Phase two will cover the lobby, scheduled for the middle of 2002 with the refurbishment of the Crowne Tower's 339 rooms. It's estimated that the refurbishment of each of the two towers will take a year to complete. The strategy is that the plaza tower will be geared to the hotel's leisure clientele, while the Crowne Tower will be tailored to the business guests.

The fourth stage of the project scheduled for three to four years time will see a revitalization of the restaurants and banqueting areas. Once completed the Crown Plaza product would be a brand targeting a higher volume upscale market. "We will be an upscale brand," said Mr. Turner, "not the Mercedes or Jaguar rather an upscale Camris."

He went onto say that the hotel would go out and seek niche markets, which were currently "not with us". "You change a logo," added Turner, "put the product at the right level and then go after these new market, the latter is often the most enjoyable and the most difficult. The key is marketing the physical side in conjunction with the sales and marketing side."

Repositioning of the Crown Plaza wont be an alien task for Michael Turner, having completed similar transformations with Holiday Inns in Sao Paulo, Brazil and Santiago, Chile.