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Tourism Industry Treads Carefully
Tourism Industry Treads Carefully
After the Disaster, Resorts
And Hotels Try to Rebound
Without Creating Ill Will
By BRUCE STANLEY in Hong Kong and JOHN LARKIN in et, Thailand
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
December 31, 2004; Page A5
Even as emergency workers remove corpses from some beaches in southern Thailand, managers of nearby resorts that escaped unscathed are facing a delicate challenge: How to win back business and convince tourists that it is all right to return while the cleanup from the tsunami disaster is under way.
In the day or two after the tsunami hit Thailand and other nations around the Indian Ocean Sunday, some hotels on the island of et, a Thai tourist hub, thought they could be up and running in a matter of days. Though that still is the case for many that escaped the full force of the waves, the task of winning back business is growing tougher as the massive scale of devastation across the stricken region becomes clearer.
The JW Marriott et Resort & Spa was expecting to be almost fully operational today. Employees were refilling the second of its two swimming pools after cleaning it of mud and debris, and management planned to repair a beachfront restaurant within days. Yet large numbers of the hotel's guests have left for the airport, and other would-be customers have called from overseas to postpone or cancel their reservations.
Marriott International Inc.'s top marketing executives plan to meet Monday at the company's Washington headquarters to map out a sales campaign that will include special calls on leading tour operators and charter groups. Susan Thronson, Marriott's senior vice president for international marketing, is building her sales pitch around pictures -- lots of them.
"If I can show fully functioning pools and restored grounds, that goes a long way," she said by phone from Bangkok.
Marriott and other big hotel chains facing a surge of cancellations at their et properties already are considering slashing room rates and even launching a global "et is back" sales blitz to try to reassure customers put off by the images of death and destruction. With tourism a mainstay of Thailand's economy, Thai tourism officials are gearing up for a publicity campaign of their own.
"It's a perception battle, because we're aware that consumers in Europe and North America and even Japan may be thinking: 'Much of Asia is in ruins, so let's cancel our holidays.' That's exactly what we don't want them to do," said Ken Scott, spokesman for the Pacific Asia Travel Association.
Despite the disaster, tourists haven't totally abandoned et. The tsunami struck at the start of the busiest two weeks of the tourist calendar, and four days later, the et airport was packed with departing foreigners. A queue of 200 people snaked yesterday from check-in counters out through the front doors and almost on to the road outside.
Still, many vacationers stayed on. At Patong, one of et's most popular resort strips, tourists strolled the beach on Wednesday, some even taking a dip in the waters that only days before had wrought such carnage.
As rescue workers cleared the remaining trapped bodies, bars and restaurants fortunate enough to be situated a few hundred yards back from the beach were jammed with patrons. Warnings of possible aftershocks and more tsunamis seemed to carry little weight with some tourists, who preferred to continue sunbathing on the beach rather than book an early flight home.
Many of the Marriott's guests also remained, refusing to let the disaster spoil their vacations, and several new arrivals even checked in throughout the week.
Marriott's immediate challenge is to spread the word that it is open for business as usual. It aims to send special alerts to its loyalty-program members and plans to launch three sales promotions in the coming year. It hopes to make a big splash at industry trade shows with updated brochures that show "the hotel, post-tsunami, still looks great," said Ms. Thronson, who was vacationing at the et Marriott with her family when the tsunami crashed ashore.
The company's executives realize they risk offending sensitivities. "I would not go out with a direct-to-consumer advertising campaign at this point," Ms. Thronson said. "I don't think it's appropriate. We're in it for the long run. We would not want to do anything that would create ill will for et or for Marriott. That said, I have a short-term revenue need. I need to continue to operate that hotel."
To strike this delicate balance, Marriott hopes to take a more nuanced and layered approach, by communicating first with travel-industry professionals and holding off "for the foreseeable future" from making a more public campaign, Ms. Thronson said.
She said it is "too soon to know" if Marriott will offer reduced rates as an incentive, though other chains, such as Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc., are considering the idea. InterContinental Hotels Group PLC already is offering cut rates on rooms at its hotels in Bangkok for tourists who fled its Holiday Inns in et and nearby Phi Phi Island. InterContinental also is waiving cancellation fees for arrivals booked at these two hotels until at least the end of January, said a company spokesman.
The Tourism Authority of Thailand, which held an emergency planning meeting yesterday, said its immediate priority is aiding in the rescue and cleanup in the southern part of the country. In February, the agency plans to launch a marketing roadshow in markets such as Asia and Europe -- homes to many of the tourists killed or injured by the tsunami.
It hopes to "present a picture of the real situation" in magazine ads and at tourism-industry trade shows, said its public-relations director, Tanes Petsuwan. "The beach that has been affected is only about 20% to 30% of the beaches in et, and only on the west coast."
Marriott's six hotels in Thailand are talking about organizing a joint sales effort in important markets even without help from the Thai Tourism Authority. Ms. Thronson said requests already are on the rise for rooms at the chain's hotels in Hua Hin and Pattaya -- resorts along Thailand's Gulf of Siam that were spared from the tsunami.
"There's always some part of the world that's absorbing demand being deflected from somewhere else," she said.
Indeed, executives and travel-industry specialists say that resorts in Bali, Fiji, Egypt, Spain and even Mexico might benefit from et's misfortune. Bali, which lost much of its tourist business to Thailand after a terrorist bombing in October 2002, is among the most likely alternative destinations.
Executives are confident that hotels in et will recover more quickly from the tsunami than they did from the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome, which ravaged tourism in Thailand and much of Southeast Asia for several months in 2003.
"This is a disaster for humanity, but it's not as serious perhaps as SARS was for the tourism industry," said Mr. Scott of the Pacific Asia Travel Association. Hotels in et, for instance, have had few cancellations from Asian tourists planning to visit during the Lunar New Year in early February.
Tourism Industry Treads Carefully
After the Disaster, Resorts
And Hotels Try to Rebound
Without Creating Ill Will
By BRUCE STANLEY in Hong Kong and JOHN LARKIN in et, Thailand
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
December 31, 2004; Page A5
Even as emergency workers remove corpses from some beaches in southern Thailand, managers of nearby resorts that escaped unscathed are facing a delicate challenge: How to win back business and convince tourists that it is all right to return while the cleanup from the tsunami disaster is under way.
In the day or two after the tsunami hit Thailand and other nations around the Indian Ocean Sunday, some hotels on the island of et, a Thai tourist hub, thought they could be up and running in a matter of days. Though that still is the case for many that escaped the full force of the waves, the task of winning back business is growing tougher as the massive scale of devastation across the stricken region becomes clearer.
The JW Marriott et Resort & Spa was expecting to be almost fully operational today. Employees were refilling the second of its two swimming pools after cleaning it of mud and debris, and management planned to repair a beachfront restaurant within days. Yet large numbers of the hotel's guests have left for the airport, and other would-be customers have called from overseas to postpone or cancel their reservations.
Marriott International Inc.'s top marketing executives plan to meet Monday at the company's Washington headquarters to map out a sales campaign that will include special calls on leading tour operators and charter groups. Susan Thronson, Marriott's senior vice president for international marketing, is building her sales pitch around pictures -- lots of them.
"If I can show fully functioning pools and restored grounds, that goes a long way," she said by phone from Bangkok.
Marriott and other big hotel chains facing a surge of cancellations at their et properties already are considering slashing room rates and even launching a global "et is back" sales blitz to try to reassure customers put off by the images of death and destruction. With tourism a mainstay of Thailand's economy, Thai tourism officials are gearing up for a publicity campaign of their own.
"It's a perception battle, because we're aware that consumers in Europe and North America and even Japan may be thinking: 'Much of Asia is in ruins, so let's cancel our holidays.' That's exactly what we don't want them to do," said Ken Scott, spokesman for the Pacific Asia Travel Association.
Despite the disaster, tourists haven't totally abandoned et. The tsunami struck at the start of the busiest two weeks of the tourist calendar, and four days later, the et airport was packed with departing foreigners. A queue of 200 people snaked yesterday from check-in counters out through the front doors and almost on to the road outside.
Still, many vacationers stayed on. At Patong, one of et's most popular resort strips, tourists strolled the beach on Wednesday, some even taking a dip in the waters that only days before had wrought such carnage.
As rescue workers cleared the remaining trapped bodies, bars and restaurants fortunate enough to be situated a few hundred yards back from the beach were jammed with patrons. Warnings of possible aftershocks and more tsunamis seemed to carry little weight with some tourists, who preferred to continue sunbathing on the beach rather than book an early flight home.
Many of the Marriott's guests also remained, refusing to let the disaster spoil their vacations, and several new arrivals even checked in throughout the week.
Marriott's immediate challenge is to spread the word that it is open for business as usual. It aims to send special alerts to its loyalty-program members and plans to launch three sales promotions in the coming year. It hopes to make a big splash at industry trade shows with updated brochures that show "the hotel, post-tsunami, still looks great," said Ms. Thronson, who was vacationing at the et Marriott with her family when the tsunami crashed ashore.
The company's executives realize they risk offending sensitivities. "I would not go out with a direct-to-consumer advertising campaign at this point," Ms. Thronson said. "I don't think it's appropriate. We're in it for the long run. We would not want to do anything that would create ill will for et or for Marriott. That said, I have a short-term revenue need. I need to continue to operate that hotel."
To strike this delicate balance, Marriott hopes to take a more nuanced and layered approach, by communicating first with travel-industry professionals and holding off "for the foreseeable future" from making a more public campaign, Ms. Thronson said.
She said it is "too soon to know" if Marriott will offer reduced rates as an incentive, though other chains, such as Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc., are considering the idea. InterContinental Hotels Group PLC already is offering cut rates on rooms at its hotels in Bangkok for tourists who fled its Holiday Inns in et and nearby Phi Phi Island. InterContinental also is waiving cancellation fees for arrivals booked at these two hotels until at least the end of January, said a company spokesman.
The Tourism Authority of Thailand, which held an emergency planning meeting yesterday, said its immediate priority is aiding in the rescue and cleanup in the southern part of the country. In February, the agency plans to launch a marketing roadshow in markets such as Asia and Europe -- homes to many of the tourists killed or injured by the tsunami.
It hopes to "present a picture of the real situation" in magazine ads and at tourism-industry trade shows, said its public-relations director, Tanes Petsuwan. "The beach that has been affected is only about 20% to 30% of the beaches in et, and only on the west coast."
Marriott's six hotels in Thailand are talking about organizing a joint sales effort in important markets even without help from the Thai Tourism Authority. Ms. Thronson said requests already are on the rise for rooms at the chain's hotels in Hua Hin and Pattaya -- resorts along Thailand's Gulf of Siam that were spared from the tsunami.
"There's always some part of the world that's absorbing demand being deflected from somewhere else," she said.
Indeed, executives and travel-industry specialists say that resorts in Bali, Fiji, Egypt, Spain and even Mexico might benefit from et's misfortune. Bali, which lost much of its tourist business to Thailand after a terrorist bombing in October 2002, is among the most likely alternative destinations.
Executives are confident that hotels in et will recover more quickly from the tsunami than they did from the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome, which ravaged tourism in Thailand and much of Southeast Asia for several months in 2003.
"This is a disaster for humanity, but it's not as serious perhaps as SARS was for the tourism industry," said Mr. Scott of the Pacific Asia Travel Association. Hotels in et, for instance, have had few cancellations from Asian tourists planning to visit during the Lunar New Year in early February.
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