Hard Rock Hotel Open

[Banana7]

Pattaya Hard Rock Hotel opened today July 1, and some guests are already checked in. Looks like the bottom has been reached and business will just get better from here. Hard Rock cafe and Soul lounge are still closed, but the pizzeria and star diner are open, as well as the main bar. Rooms are heavily discounted!

Edited July 1, 2020 by Banana7

[Susco]

24 minutes ago, Banana7 said:

Looks like the bottom has been reached and business will just get better from here.

One swallow doesn't make spring.

 

Wait a few more months to notice how many business will never reopen.

[kinyara]

They must be confident their discount policy will attract affluent young Thais for the upcoming long weekends. I've seen a lot of the larger higher end hotels in Central Pattaya, Naklua and Jomtien gearing up for opening the last couple of days, I still struggle to see how they are going to attract enough custom on a full week basis. 

 

It's beyond sad to see people still queueing 3 hours for free food while the other half arrive from Bangkok for the weekend on discounted travel supported by the government. Support the voter base I suppose. 

 

[SiSePuede419]

22 hours ago, Banana7 said:

Looks like the bottom has been reached

Nothing has changed from day 1.

 

No vaccine.

 

No therapeutics.

 

Are you <deleted> serious? ????

[Leaver]

On 7/1/2020 at 10:24 PM, Banana7 said:

Looks like the bottom has been reached and business will just get better from here.

No where near the bottom.  

 

The culling has only just started.  

[Banana7]

Hard Rock is rocking! Over 500 guests at the hotel for this weekend. Room prices have never been lower, other things are also discount.

[Leaver]

21 hours ago, Banana7 said:

Hard Rock is rocking! Over 500 guests at the hotel for this weekend. Room prices have never been lower, other things are also discount.

Sounds like a good kick start, but is it sustainable with heavy discounts?  

[champers]

4 hours ago, Leaver said:

Sounds like a good kick start, but is it sustainable with heavy discounts?  

Isn't the Government fronting up for the discounts  ...  and discounted flights?

[Banana7]

3 hours ago, champers said:

Isn't the Government fronting up for the discounts  ...  and discounted flights?

Government discount program registration starts July 15, so no government fronting at this point.

[Banana7]

8 hours ago, Leaver said:

Sounds like a good kick start, but is it sustainable with heavy discounts?  

Some guests had a free food and beverage coupon for 1,000 baht. I wonder how they got the coupon?? Super busy at the hotel on Saturday, should be the same on Sunday. The pool and restaurants were overflowing with guests.  This is probably because the special holidays next week.

 

Don't know if the discounts are sustainable. Don't know if they are making a profit but any contribution to reducing fixed costs/overhead is good.

[kinyara]

1 hour ago, Banana7 said:

Some guests had a free food and beverage coupon for 1,000 baht. I wonder how they got the coupon?? Super busy at the hotel on Saturday, should be the same on Sunday. The pool and restaurants were overflowing with guests.  This is probably because the special holidays next week.

 

Don't know if the discounts are sustainable. Don't know if they are making a profit but any contribution to reducing fixed costs/overhead is good.

You raise an interesting point, what kind of restrictions is the pool area operating under if the hotel is packed and you say the " pool is overflowing with guests"? 

 

We know the bars are suffering pretty draconian operating restrictions but what of these 5 star resorts common areas? 

[BritManToo]

4 hours ago, kinyara said:

We know the bars are suffering pretty draconian operating restrictions but what of these 5 star resorts common areas? 

Restrictions only appear to be applied to places with bar licences.

Restaurants and hotels mainly operating as normal.

Edited July 4, 2020 by BritManToo

[Leaver]

17 hours ago, champers said:

Isn't the Government fronting up for the discounts  ...  and discounted flights?

This government initiative can't continue forever.  With no international tourists, in any decent numbers for the foreseeable future, it will be interesting to see when they end it.     

[Leaver]

14 hours ago, Banana7 said:

Some guests had a free food and beverage coupon for 1,000 baht. I wonder how they got the coupon?? Super busy at the hotel on Saturday, should be the same on Sunday. The pool and restaurants were overflowing with guests.  This is probably because the special holidays next week.

 

Don't know if the discounts are sustainable. Don't know if they are making a profit but any contribution to reducing fixed costs/overhead is good.

As another member said, not sure offering heavily discounted F&B and accommodation to fill the hotel is a wise move as far as the  virus spread is concerned.  Especially since some Thai's will travel from different provinces to take advantage of the discounts. 

 

I agree anything that contributes to the fixed costs is a good thing, and provides much needed employment.  Only The Hard Rock management knows it's profit, break even, and loss bottom line.   They will eventually find what the market is prepared to pay, in a post Covid-19 domestic, and later on international, tourism market.      

[kinyara]

Seeing how busy a lot of the higher end hotels look this weekend I'm wondering if they may have inadvertently stumbled across a better low season pricing model for the future that they may not have tried as hard to attract in the past ie directly targeting Thai customers than primarily focussing the majority of effort on foreign tourists. 

 

I'm liking this more Thai tourist feel at the moment, think I'm realising how the overtly seedy side of Pattaya, like Soi 6 and Walking Street and who it attracts really drags the place down. 

 

 

 

[Maha Sarakham]

Saw rooms here for $40 USD or about 1200 THB around December time frame.  Pretty amazing, doubt they'll be much to celebrate this year though.

[Banana7]

16 hours ago, Maha Sarakham said:

Saw rooms here for $40 USD or about 1200 THB around December time frame.  Pretty amazing, doubt they'll be much to celebrate this year though.

Usually the cheapest room was about 3,500 baht and maybe 3,000- 2,600 per room for groups, depending on the size.

 

I think they want the hotel to get to at least 80% capacity before starting to raise the prices.

[Leaver]

43 minutes ago, Banana7 said:

Usually the cheapest room was about 3,500 baht and maybe 3,000- 2,600 per room for groups, depending on the size.

 

I think they want the hotel to get to at least 80% capacity before starting to raise the prices.

Who do they hope to raise the prices on? 

 

The value of a brand isn't worth much if not one has the money that the brand is demanding. 

 

It's not just The Hard Rock, many businesses here will need to negotiate with landlords and basically "reprice" Pattaya for F&B and accommodation.  Especially when you consider the competition from the likes of Vietnam, with 27 baht beers in a nice air conditioned bar with hostesses.  

 

Pattaya pushed the market past what it was prepared to pay.  There will have to be a reset, or it could lose an even bigger segment of the western tourist market in post virus tourism.

 

Edited July 6, 2020 by Leaver

[jacko45k]

14 hours ago, Leaver said:

Especially when you consider the competition from the likes of Vietnam, with 27 baht beers in a nice air conditioned bar with hostesses.  

We were focused on hotel room prices.........

[bkk6060]

Cheeseburger, fries and a drink will run about $20 at the place.

No thanks.

Edited July 6, 2020 by bkk6060

[BigStar]

22 hours ago, Leaver said:

competition from the likes of Vietnam, with 27 baht beers in a nice air conditioned bar with hostesses

The only market you're familiar with isn't the Hard Rock hotel target market. Irrelevant as usual.

 

22 hours ago, Leaver said:

Pattaya pushed the market past what it was prepared to pay. 

As you've been told previously, there's no imaginary monolithic reified Pattaya you constantly invoke to wow the peanut gallery. And you have the economics all confused again, typically putting the cart before the horse. Individual businesses will charge what the market will bear at any given time according to their particular business models, which are dynamic anyway.

 

The big news in the thread being carefully ignored is that TAT: TVF doesn't recognize domestic tourism at all, so Hard Rock can't possibly be renting rooms to Thais. (We even saw them in sitting in crowded beach chairs at Jomtien--fake photo no doubt.) Moreover, if some "outside" Thai happens, randomly, to end up in Pattaya somehow, it's merely to eat som tum, drink Sangsom, and then turn around and leave. There is no staying overnight! And the malls--crowded & doing good business. HUH?

 

We seem to be falling down on the job here by not calling out all the fake news. Since this seems a bit more than som tum and Sangsom, our fallback position, to protect the doomster narrative, has to be that it's just a temporary spike, Vietnam, blah blah.

[Leaver]

10 hours ago, jacko45k said:

We were focused on hotel room prices.........

The hospitality industry, food, beverage, accommodation, and entertainment, are all interconnected.  

 

I have posted a price comparison between a night in a Hilton Hotel in Thailand, and a night in a Hilton Hotel in Vietnam, in the past.  

 

Edited July 7, 2020 by Leaver

[Leaver]

1 hour ago, BigStar said:

The only market you're familiar with isn't the Hard Rock hotel target market. Irrelevant as usual.

 

As you've been told previously, there's no imaginary monolithic reified Pattaya you constantly invoke to wow the peanut gallery. And you have the economics all confused again, typically putting the cart before the horse. Individual businesses will charge what the market will bear at any given time according to their particular business models, which are dynamic anyway.

 

The big news in the thread being carefully ignored is that TAT: TVF doesn't recognize domestic tourism at all, so Hard Rock can't possibly be renting rooms to Thais. (We even saw them in sitting in crowded beach chairs at Jomtien--fake photo no doubt.) Moreover, if some "outside" Thai happens, randomly, to end up in Pattaya somehow, it's merely to eat som tum, drink Sangsom, and then turn around and leave. There is no staying overnight! And the malls--crowded & doing good business. HUH?

 

We seem to be falling down on the job here by not calling out all the fake news. Since this seems a bit more than som tum and Sangsom, our fallback position, to protect the doomster narrative, has to be that it's just a temporary spike, Vietnam, blah blah.

Have you ever been to Vietnam?  Are you claiming 27 baht beers in a girl bar in Vietnam is fake news?

 

Individual businesses are forced to pass on high rents to the consumer.  Thus, higher costs of F&B, and accommodation here.  It's the greedy Thai landlords that have played a big part in Pattaya outpricing itself in the South East Asia tourism market.  For example, 50k baht per month rent for a brick bar under a tin roof, expecting customers to then pay 80 to 90 baht a beer pretty much came to an end this past high season.  Not to mention lady drinks and bar fines were only for the fools.  

 

You do remember this past high season, before the virus, don't you?  There were several articles on TV news with senior Thai's coming out and saying how quiet it was here, with one saying in an article that "Vietnam was scary" for Thailand. Not often you see Thai's admitting there is a problem, such is the culture with a loss of face.  Ahhhhhhhh, yet more fake news you say.  ????    

 

So, we have an influx of domestic tourism into Pattaya due to national holidays and government subsidies.  When the holidays and subsidies are over, so is the domestic tourism.  Hardly sustainable.    

 

Of course we saw domestic tourists sitting in beach chairs at Jomtien.  They got a government discounted hotel room, then headed down the to the beach to eat cheap som tum and drink Sangsom.  Did you expect them to pay 85 baht a beer in a bar on Beach Road, overlooking the ocean?  They are not golden egg layers.  ????  

 

 

[Ron jeremy]

25 minutes ago, Leaver said:

Hardly irrelevant.  The competition, just down the road, is still offering the same product, but for cheaper, a lot cheaper. that's the same Tiger Beer being offered in Vietnam for 27 baht.  

 

It's not a given, but high rents here would be the main reason Pattaya has outpriced itself in the independent tourism market in the region.

 

Wrong.  Greedy Thai landlords drive past their properties and see if they are busy.  If they are busy, it usually means the farang owner has worked hard to build up a good business, one that is competitive in pricing, also.  So what does the Thai landlord do, increase the rent, because he believes his tenant can afford to pay it, which forces price increases in the business, so custom falls away, and the business goes broke.  Very common here.   The rent increase are not in line with inflation, they are a price gouge by the Thai landlord.   

 

LK Metro is a good example.  Many not prepared to pay the rents on Walking Street, so LK Metro was born.  Only a matter of time before rents on LK Metro rise to Walking Street prices, then so do the drink prices, bar fines etc, then I guess the next haven will be Soi Bongkot.  Then it all starts again. 

 

Take a good look at Pattaya infrastructure.  The flooding, the dirty beach and ocean, pot holes, traffic, water and electric supply failures, uneven footpaths, stinking sewer pipes on the road ways etc.  Do you think Pattaya can demand such prices for a holiday here, simply because it has "developed?"

 

The Hard Rock has a false market at the moment.  Let's see what market it has when the government subsidies and discounts are removed. 

 

See the photos in this thread.  Are these The Hard Rock market you talk about?  ????

 

 

 

There were many articles, with more than one senior Thai in the industry stating publicly how low the high season was for foreigners.  

 

Those articles only made public what those here already could see. 

 

In any case, if Pattaya is to bounce back, and survive, it needs a market correction, starting with Thai landlords.  They raised the prices to a point where the customers / tourists were no longer prepared to pay what their rents demanded for the goods and services being sold out of their properties.  

 

From The Hard Rock to a bar under a tin roof, Pattaya has not represented a value for money holiday for some seasons now, and this was certain evidence in the past high season, pre virus, with the lowest high season ever.  

I agree with pattaya not representing the value it once did, I know of a group of 10 that came every year, last 2 years, nly 2 have returned. Those being American whose dollar has not been decimated by the baht.

the others from Canada, Australia and the U.K. Not returning.

Edited July 10, 2020 by Ron jeremy
Change

[Ron jeremy]

The group of guys that no lnger return represent a fairly well off sort of higher end crowd, they don't come to sit with expats drinking 70 baht beers, not that there is anything wrong with it, but they tend to go to nicer places, higher end, nightclubs , eat at nice restaurants, not n food courts in malls, and the value isn't there,,prices don't represent good value like they used to, especially alcohol. Although I don't partake in this environment, I went for a night out in bkk soi 11, costs were simply out of control, everyone was amazed at the costs even compared to back home. Pattaya not much difference.the beach destinations were also quite pricey.

[Leaver]

7 hours ago, Ron jeremy said:

I agree with pattaya not representing the value it once did, I know of a group of 10 that came every year, last 2 years, nly 2 have returned. Those being American whose dollar has not been decimated by the baht.

the others from Canada, Australia and the U.K. Not returning.

They may not return to Pattaya / Thailand, but there's plenty of other options in the region for them.   

[metisdead]

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Edited July 10, 2020 by metisdead