Digger

This is not only well written... it took baIIs to post it.

How much 'interest' do these owners have in their staff? None! They are interested ONLY in thier own pockets and using emotional blackmail to that end.

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Brilliant deduction work from your Greek base, how much interest do you have in your staff? None? Some? I guess like all customer driven business you have a lot off interest in your staff, as do the hotel operators in southern Thailand. If, god forbid, you'd had 4 years of catastrophes and as a last resort you had to lay off some staff I'd imagine you'd feel 'reluctant', as do the hotel operators in southern Thailand.

quote=digger

I have not seen the comments from the Thai hotel owner and specifically have not seen or heard of any such letters being written by a Thai.

The poster was called Soony who owns a restaurant in Krabi (Not a hotel, my mistake, but the sentiments are the same) http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/index.php?ac...sult_type=posts

Tax said:

to send letters out asking prospective guests to think about staff redundancies in order to gain "sympathy bookings " is marketing of the most cynical kind.

If it is cynical then it is no more cynical than the worldwide tv coverage of the 'devastaion' of Phuket, you should have seen the camera crews vying for space around the ever decreasing rubble pile that was being removed from the north end of Patong last week, although unlike you I didn't think to myself 'you cynical bastards' I thought 'fair enough, some good may yet come of it'

Redundancies are harsh, but it is a reality here, better it goes unsaid? The little guy will suffer? This is a unique situation where all people are suffering, big, little, medium, all people. I too might have thought 'screw you big hotel barons, you've had it too good for too long' but they haven't had it good for a long time.

Your opinions are you're own, however your scorn is misplaced.

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Thanks for the link - I have just read through the article. Some good comments made and in particular, Sonny's were well put. Notice he did not say anything negative viz a viz sacking his staff, starving families etc. Most Thai business owners particularly smaller business owners are benevolent towards their staff. The first Thai I worked for in Bangkok would be the first to offer to pay for the operation for one of his staff needing hospital treatment etc. Often allowed time off etc. He was more of a father figure to his staff, and if you read any books on Thai management techniques, these figure highly in peoples unspoken loyalty. So nothing to disagree about there. However, this canny Thai man I used to work for, had the foresight to squirrel away cash. He did not pay fancy sums to his staff, but equally when times were bad, he would not kick them out on the streets after just 3 weeks of a downturn. He truly understood how to get loyalty out of his staff and he did it exceptionally well. He is not unqiue by any chance. Perhaps not as hard nosed as many Chinese Thai but for him he is considered successfull and wealthy. I recall during the SARS problems, he had staff busy painting the offices, clearing out stock rooms, lots of customer visits and even arranged low cost training programmes for them and all the other things most business never has time to do. "better to keep them busy" he said to me one day. He even reduced the amount of time he spent on the golf club to show solidarity with his staff (but I never saw him pick up a paint brush!!). His approach was to get the staff on his side, say that we are going through tough times and that we need to use this downtime to ensure that we are better once things turn around. He was right of course, and when SARS lapsed, we were busier than ever, but more importantly the employees felt like they wanted to go the extra mile and over deliver to him as he had stood by them all during the bad times.

what i propose is to purchase a condo with my girl with us both as the shared owners

,then send the money each month to pay the mortgage

If you are a farang, and don't have PR status, this cannot be done. You need to bring the purchase price money in from offshore, with evidence to that effect, if you want to be the registered owner of the condo.

Although there are ways in which you can be a defacto mortgagee, the structure you set out is not one of them.

SM

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small point, but you do not need PR to obtain a mortgage on a property. For a condo in your name, you can do it after the full purchase price has been brought in and correctly registered at land office. For a company owned house and land, it can be done at anytime. You do though need work permit and strong income locally in Thailand.

I notice no-one jumped up and down shaking their righteous assess when a very pleasant Thai gentleman who owns a resort in Krabi said exactly the same thing about 10 days ago, posted in the Tsunami section.

How was that letter blaming customers? I didn't see any blame being laid anywhere, just another politely put version of the general plea that is eminating from all business sectors for people to come back to Phuket.

Those room rates are too much for you? Fine you obviously don't belong in their market bracket, but those rates are cheap for that kind of hotel.

As devastating as the tsunami was, it came on the back of Avian Flu, SARS, war in Iraq, Bali bomb, Sept 11, pretty much year on year for the past 4 years, so I guess most  tourist related business reserves would get streched over that amount of time.

We could go round to their hotel and give them a good kicking, helll why not get ourselves a lynch mob for these dirty, evil capitalists.

Nice that those fortunate enough to survive the tsunami earn your contempt for trying to keep their business' afloat, many friends are in dire starights here, Tornado, a respected member and busnessman in Phuket for many years is having to sell up and move on, is that his own fault too?

Your views sadden me.

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I have not seen the comments from the Thai hotel owner and specifically have not seen or heard of any such letters being written by a Thai. Only examples I have come across have been this one and the general comments put out by the JW Marriotts PR department attributed to the farang head of sales/marketing.

Nobody has issue with the severity of the disaster and the large scale problems it has caused. I do not see any comments along those lines from any posters. The specific concern is the content of the letter:-

I am the owner/ manager of a hotel on the tourist island of Phuket and my

hotel is nearly empty. This is true of all the accommodation and tourist

venues on the island. The tourists have stopped coming. The second wave of

destruction is upon us in the form of reluctant sackings, work without pay,

work at half-pay and shops without customers. The effect on low-income

families and local individuals in debt, with children to care for, is

terrible. It is a slower form of death than the initial tsunamis could ever

achieve.

You are entitled of course to your opinion, as am I. In my opinion this letter is unprofessional, badly written and does not portray anything positive. Its not going to get people back to Phuket. The words portray a 3rd world environment with children begging for scraps of food in the street, ravaged by death and decaying bodies - hardly a picture of health, happiness and relaxing well being.

As we know, this is not a accurate reflection of Phuket, but someone in say Australia reading this letter aint going to suddenly say, "gee lets get on the plane and go and have a wonderfull beach holiday in Phuket."

Anybody with a disposable income able to afford US$200 per night for a room is not going to go to Phuket right now unless something changes. Can you imagine, Mercedes Benz advertising its cars along the lines that their workers in Germany are really suffering because nobody is buying their cars. Not a chance of it. Negative marketing works for appeals to extract donations but it does not sell a product - people do not buy big ticket products out of guilt or sympathy. For a holiday they are buying a dream, and this letter sounds like a nightmare on the streets.

Second...a good business is a careful business...don't sound like them. Bad luck if you were hired by them I guess.

Sink.......!!

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This thread is missing one slight point...who on earth was 'careful' to plan for a tsunami??? The other point being, while I wouldn't pony up for a 10,000 baht hotel, I recognise the base fact, the best way forward to help local people in Phuket, is to visit.

I await what can only be called 'self-righteous scorn' ... going on what i've read here thus far...

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Not saying that you 'plan' specifically for a Tsunami - many factors could affect hotel occupancy. SARS, terrorist attack on Phuket or any of the smaller resort areas on the Andaman Sea any of which would empty the hotel. My concern is the way the letter is written originally by taking advantage of a situation and an inference that its the fault of the customers. This hotel seems to have escaped from damage and they are caught up in something not of their making, but they have no contingency plan. Not exactly self righteous scorn in my opinion. Assuming this hotel has say 20 staff - there salary bill would be around 20,000-30,000 baht a week. Three weeks after the disaster, they are laying off staff which indicates they have little or no reserves or are deciding to not use reserves to pay for the staff salaries. Either way, not very smart way to run a business. I have a lot more sympathy with mom & pop shops who's entire livlihood was washed away and they probably have nothing more than the clothes they were wearing. But a large clearly expensive resort should have better provisions for such a disaster.

I paid for my previous gf to have lessons opposite Foodland last year.I can't remember the cost,about 3000 baht for 10 hours I think.

According to my then gf the instructor was about 23 years old and spent the whole time on the phone to his gf or trying to chat my gf up.

After 3 lessons he said it would be a good idea for her to use the car that I had bought for her, which I suppose there was some logic in.

Then I found out she was driving on her own across Pattaya,having her lesson and then he let her drive home again on her own.

After the 10 hours were up she decided that as she was as good as any other driver on the road so refused any more lessons.

Getting in a car with her was scarier than any white knuckle rollercoaster ride that I've tried.

We split up soon after and she kept the car. About 2 weeks later she smashed into a tree ,drunk as a skunk at 8 in the morning.

Som Nom Nar !

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And no doubt it was all the farang fault "if you not give me car, I could not have crashed it when I got pissed up" Oh and no doubt she looked to you to cover her hospital bills?????

Ah life in Thailand.

And of course, if Misters Bresser and de Beer start an interesting promotional rate then I may take notice.  Had a pretty decent holiday in Phuket (first time there) during the height of the sars-hype. 

So... talk is cheap, but 1000 baht for a 4-5 star hotel near the beach and I'll be there pretty soon.  Would pay for staff salaries at least...

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By the sound of things, even if you get the 1,000 baht rate at this hotel, you will be making your own bed and serving your own drinks. No staff - gone already and starving by the streetside according to the first begging letter. By the way bring some 10 baht coins for the electric meter if you want any power or air con.

According to the absolute letter of the law you are only allowed to work at the address shown on your Work Permit, although this is patently ridiculous - I run my own Company here and have to visit Customers, by doing this I am technically in breach of the regulations.

There has actually been an instance where a Farang was in trouble for contravening this regulation - the Australian Receivers who were employed to sort out the mess at TPI had Work Permits which tied them to their own offices in Bangkok, the major shareholder of TPI - who is in a long running dispute with Creditors and Receivers etc. filed a Police complaint and 2 or 3 of the Farang were arrested because they "worked" at TPI Offices and at the Refinery etc. in Rayong.

T I T

Patrick

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That was the example that sprung to my mind when reading through this thread, however I actually thought that the technicality they got them on was not so much location but working outside the scope of their work permit. i.e they were 'directors' in law of TPI, however their work permits stated 'consultants' for the management company which has no legal connection with TPI. So in essence, they were working for TPI and signing documents as company directors but without the work permit. Of course huge political influence being wielded on this case, but if that is correct, difficult for anyone to argue in law that they were working outside of the scope of their work permit, particularly as they were signing company documents. Not many 'consultants' actually sign documents for their clients.

I just had a look over their website. Very well done site and likely to have cost a fortune. Hotel looks like its less than 2 years old. Located above and to the south of Patong Beach/bay.

Room rates are outrageous - its as expensive as the JW Marriott but without the grounds from what I can tell. Reading between the lines these guys have truly over extended themselves and have no cash.

Unfortunately no signs of 1,000 baht special offers - no signs of any special offers which is what I would have done straight away this happened and got the specials onto the website. I think they are being somewhat naive in 'expecting' people to 'help' them out to keep their staff. Reminds me of the first job I had at 14 years old in Safeway after school. Little one line comment on the back of the namecard I had to wear when on duty. Something along the lines of "Our customers are not dependant on us, but we are dependant upon them" It was a simpler wording and no doubt is a classic saying on training courses the world over.

Looks like Sunbelt might be getting a firesale listing very soon (unless they have already !!)

Set it all up in a company.Then you can turf her out at anytime and all it costs is approx Baht15,000-20,000.Ask SunBeltAsia or Indo-Siam.

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I have heard that some people have managed to set up a company for as little as Bt20,000 to own property but this has not been my experience. Please also note that the company must be properly audited on an annual basis and that you will incur additional annual auditing costs of at least Bt20,000. People have also run into problems with the Inland Revenue because you are operating a non-trading company (they want you to pay some VAT). There are advantages of the Company route particularly if you sell the property in the future - by selling the company you can save on transfer taxes.

In my experience, the company route is suitable if the land and property are valuable (say worth in excess of Bt10m).

A cheaper and simpler route is to say register the land in your wife's name and then lease it off her for 30 years. That way, if you split up, you will still own the land and the house for the period of the lease. Also, Foreign nationals may own a building (as distinct from it's land) and may register such transfer of ownership into their names at the local district office.

Apologies if I have simply repeated other peoples posts. I have not read the whole thread but I noticed that several comments were wrong.

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Its not VAT they want, its a correctly filed and audited company account. From this you most likely will need to pay some taxes, e.g property rental tax and or corporation tax. VAT only applies if your turnover is something like more than 1,600,000 baht per annum. You really just need some income and expense (e.g income being rent your paying to the company, say 10,000 baht a month and expenses, e.g UBC bills made out to the company, Furniture receipts from Index etc. From that your accountant can make up a balance sheet. Calculate tax from the Profit & Loss statement and file it. Quite simple really but not as cheap as it used to be as tax needs to be paid rather than ignored in the past.

Been going there a long time.....usually avoid the areas where these guys hang out.

Last time in November I was in Electirc blue and this 50ish Pommy guy was telling me how he had nutted a loud mouth yank....didnt impress me but didnt make me wanna stay for another drink....dont need that B******T

I do agree that they do seem to be growing in number and that is not good for any area where they settle....There was the recent case where a known(in europe) UK soccer hooligan (clean skin in Thailand though) was shot by a couple of Thai guys, I dont think it was because they didnt like his face which they have altered.

Thats the problem, some of these guys arent moving there to enjoy the lifestyle but rather to carry on in nefarious dealings that it is to hard for them to do back in Blighty

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Within reason that may be true, however do not underestimate the knowledge and ability of the Thai police and in particular Thai immigration police to 'convince' certain people that staying in Thailand is not in their best interests. Does not matter if they are married either. One bar owner of a certain daytime, drinking den in Jomtien, married to a Thai with kids is now residing in another country due to the immigration police taking a severe disliking to him and what he was up to.

Furthemore, I know for a fact that they have a handle on almost every 'grey' long term resident in Pattaya and what they are up to. When serious &lt;deleted&gt; happens, why do you think that within days they have invariably made arrests and solved the crimes?

Dear Sir,

I am the owner of a hotel that for the past XX years has been charging a premium price, invariably way over normal cost + profit margins. For the last XX years, we have not accumulated any reserves from our profits and have spent everything we have earnt over these good years. We benefited immensly from the Bali disaster, by way of incremental business which has helped our profits. Due to our lax financial controls, we find ourselves in a slight jam. For the last 3 weeks, nobody has visited our hotel and thus we have no income. Unfortunately we have no reserves other what has been spent already. Unfortunately the fixed costs in a hotel are rather high. Highest of course is staff costs, given that we own the land and buildings already. So in order to preserve money, we have sacked our staff. These staff dont earn a lot, but by getting rid off 20 staff, we are saving around 20,000 baht per week ( or the equivalent income of 1 rooms for a week at US$100 per night). The bar and restuarant is quiet as well so we have sacked the bar staff and restaurant staff as well. We know our prices are high here in Phuket, but truly we do need to sell a bottle of Heineken for which we pay 26baht, at cost +300%. Please dont ask us to go to the bank and secure financing based on our land because we have already put as collateral the hotel for a housing project we thought we would make a fortune on. Unfortunately thats not looking too promising right now.

However, you can help us here, we NEED you to come back to save our staff from losing their jobs. We would love to dig into our pockets but because of our stupidity and short sightedness, we have no reserves - go on do us a favour and book rooms and come and help us out, we really need your US$100 and so do our staff. Just to make it worthwile, we will honour our old high season prices, so you can stay in Phuket at the same price as before the disaster. Dont be a cheapskate and ask for a discount as everytime we reduce the price, we have to take it out of the staff salaries. We have to make our profit numbers after all. This is Thailand.

I am sorry but there is no excuse for any well run company to be laying off staff and trying to put the blame on their customers - Its the first rule of business management, accumulate cash reserves and keep enough to keep your business running over for just such an incident. Any well run business should have insurance coverage for business interuption beyond their control or deep enough pockets to effectively self insure.

The company I worked for was massively hit by SARS. Our business income dried up by 98% - we did not lay off one member of staff. We did ask staff to take unpaid 2 weeks leave over 3 months, the entire regional management team was paid at 50% of salary for 2 months and we did reduce all our other expenses drastically. We did pay our bills, we accurately forecast worse case scenarios for SARS lasting 12 months, we renegotiated lease payments, BUT we did not make our staff, who could least afford to lose their jobs, suffer. We as managers, managed.

In my company now which has been established for 18 months, we could and would pay our staff before the management team. We have enough reserves to pay our fixed costs and staff for the next 18 months without any income. These guys have overstretched themselves and its the small person who is going to pay.

Sorry to sound unsympathetic but this kind of letter really annoys me.

You can put a loan on the property/land in the same way as a mortgage. This MUST be registered at land office and will show on the chanot as an uncleared loan. Nobody (except some dumb farang without advice) would buy any such land until the loan has been repaid.

I hope they approve foreigners,i think family mart would.

On WCR .his car rental business i know is for sale but i have no exp in cars,i dont know how car rentals would do in Pattaya anyway considering most tourists rent motorbikes. I have about 4 mil max to invest in a business,i suppose i should say around 3 mil to keep some aside,whether this will get me a franchise is another matter.

It seems very hard to get a business earning 1 million profit per year in Thailand.

I suppose anyone thats earning that doesnt want to sell.

I did notice a paintball business thats been advertised on sunbelts site for about 12 months.The price seems to be good.Obvoiusly the lands under lease,so im not sure of the rent,but it could be good with the right business flair.

A piece of advice i got from a friend last time i was in Pattaya was to stay away from buying Gyms,apparently one man in Pattaya owns several and has a monolopy. I wont give up my search,however it seems the same businesses everyday advertised on sunbelt. There must be some good businesses out there,if worst comes to the worst then i maybe buy a small bar let a thai run it for me and will stay in australia and just work my present job,visiting thailand for a week every few months.Getting back to the franchise topic,im positive i saw on sunbelts website about 12 months ago a franchise miini mart in pattaya selling for 1 million baht,so whether he has private convenience stores for sale i dont know.

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There is a big car rental market for holidaymakers here. Try and get a rental car of Budget or Avis in peak season - very difficult. Very low depreciation of cars here and if the business is sound, you can finance new cars through the business. Seems quite a strong business model to me, with small amount of maintenance from owners side. Getting cars serviced is cheap as well.

No idea about paintball business model other than I would not pay to do paintballing in 30 degree heat and then put on some smelly boiler suit and head protection to run around a field and get even hotter.

) . If you have unprotected sex in that time the chances of giving in to the partner is close to 100% ( something most people don't know ) . After the 3 months period , your body is having antibodies and the chances of giving it to the partner is maybe 1% .

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Where are your facts to back this up? This is misleading to say the least. As far as I can ascertain there are no facts on this as nobody in their right mind is going to do the research. Its like playing Russian Roulette with a HIV negative persons well being. Nobody will knowingly expose a HIV negative person to a HIV virus just to tell how infectious the HIV is and then repeat it enough times to draw factual conclusions. It can be deduced however that the 'liklihood' of infection reduces as the amount of virus is lowered in the HIV positive person, however as viral load testing is done on blood, not for example, Sperm, no absolute conclusions can be drawn. By the way the viral load in an infected person does not suddenly crash after 3 months of infection. It gradually reduces and then rises over a number of years not months. After 3 months, viral load is typically around 20-100,000. Once on medication and with viral load undetectable, your statement of 1% liklihood sounds plausible but again its never been proven and somehow I cant see it ever being proven.

I agree with Dave on this one. Every BG I have known has cheated on her fella, primarily because SHE assumes he is cheating on her somehow. Seems to be an ingrained feeling of insecurity. Personally I have never seen a BG get over it.

If your determined to buy a business, contact the guy on this forum called 'wcr' - I am sure he mentioned a short time ago that he is looking at selling his car rental business. Most likely has full work permit, proper books and a decent track record. You could do a lot worse than a car rental company in Pattaya.

I don't know any beer bar owners that have work permits.

Clubs and enclosed bars, disco's are a different matter though.

I've had one for 3 years now.

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Presume that does not extend to gogo bars Dave? Never met one owner with a permit or indeed any bar considered as having girls available to be bought out of the bar, however might be mistaken. I have seen Hotels that have girly bars on the side, however they are owned by different businesses and therefore the work permit is issued for the hotel business as against the bar.

MNC's?

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Yes, Multi National Company/Corporation

QUOTE]

Do u think i could get a work permit?

Yes

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What does a beer bar owner need to successfully obtain a work permit. I have never met a beer bar owner that has a work permit - I have met bar owners with 50,000,000 baht + business investments who have work permits but never a beer bar. Presumably he would need to be registered for VAT, have a statement from the property owner confirming the lease (and how likely is that on a beer bar?), photograph of the offices (???), etc etc and then go up to Chonburi and expect the governor to actually sign off a work permit that borders on pimping. Somehow I cant see it but would be delighted to learn that Sunbelt has got work permits for beer bar owners in Pattaya.

Maybe I am being paranoid, but I would be careful about which income box you tick if you have a work permit and are paying taxes in Thailand. Thai tax law apparently requires one to pay income tax on all income that is earned or brought into the country. I know quite a few expats whose deal is to get paid a basic salary in Thailand (perhaps the minimum wage for their country) and the rest in their home currency, deposited to a home bank. And they are not living a 50,000 baht/month lifestyle!

Immigration is certainly getting computerised, and it would not be such a complicated database task to run a comparison of stated gross income in a tax return against the income stated on the immigration form. The immigration form fields are clearly set up to be entered into a database of some sort.

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The tax office already regularly investigate foreigners - in particular they have focused on Japanese in the past working for MNC's who have declared salaries around 50-100,000 baht. When my employer moved me here 5 years ago, the accountants they used (Deloittes) advised against any kind of offshore arrangement unless you genuinely were travelling in and out very often and had 2 contracts structured for work in Thailand and the work outside, which would be paid from another country and not paid into Thailand. They advised that many many Japanese thought they could get away with underdeclaring salary, not doing any or little travel (so there full working time is in Thailand essentially) and many of them have been hit with HUGE tax bills.

I have been tax investigated and was staggered at just how much information the Thai tax authorities have at their fingertips. They had all my movements in and out of the country - over 4 passports I might add. All my foreign remitances into the country (from 3 different banks) and knew which companies I was a director of. The pile of papers was about 6 inches thick. Forget databases this was all hard copy. After some questions to dot some i's and cross some T's they were satisfied that my tax payments were correct. Thanked me (via my lawyer/accountant) and went on their way. Seemingly some jealous farang had given my name as a possible evader of tax on a house rental income and they investigated from there. Moral of the story is that foreigners DO stick out like a sore thumb and are an easy target for investigation, so beware and play by the Thai rules.

How can I provide water for a bar that has over 200 customers in it every hour throughout the night when the supply does'nt back it up? I can't get a truck out after 8pm, nobody can.

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Kitten Club on Pattayaland 2 did last Saturday night at 10.00pm, I tripped over the hosepipe walking into the place and through the magic red curtain

exapt friend of mine who used to live in Pattaya, always saw a doctor at Bumrungrad as she felt the doctors and hospitals in Pattaya did not have a clue how to treat diabetes. She was having her medical costs paid for though by her employer (Aussie exapt - full package deal) so she probably did not care what the cost was only that the doctor knew what he/she was talking about.

I'll email her and get the name of the doctor. From memory I think she was pretty happy with whoever she saw and she is difficult to please.

The problem is that they are trying to fit 42"plasma TVs into the back of the seats

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Oh thats ok then - I had assumed some air force bosses had stumbled on a great deal in 'exchange & mart' or 'used airline trader' offering re-conditioned 30 year old but hardly used tanks, oops sorry business class seats for a bargain US$50,000 a piece with a full supply of spare parts and they had been trying to orchestrate how TG would actually end up paying just $49,999 - thereby getting a fantastic deal and providing retirement benefits for some of the top brass

..................We are next going to import her Ford Scorpio................

excuse me asking but is it really worth going to the trouble and undoubted hassle of importing a ford scorpio into thailand , where will the spare parts come from should it need them (or rather ,when it needs them , it's a ford ), a scorpio is just a run of the mill built to a price ford , why not just buy a similar car here and avoid the headache ?

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I have seen loads of '97, '98 mondeo's in the ford service centre on Sukhumvit Road but never see them on the roads. Presume they have to go into Ford service centre to stand a chance of getting the correct spare parts. Having said that mate of mine has got a ford laser and he reckons he has never had to wait for any spare parts so perhaps they keep a pretty good stock, at least for the models they have sold in the past but cant recall ever seeing a Ford Scorpio in Bangkok.

Another reason why most senior policemen spend the day on the golf course - less chance of something hitting them between TV appearances when a grizzly or serious crime takes place and they have to go and personally supervise the investigation.

Now if only this guy had followed the rules, he would not have got hit.