IT. Centre

[crusty]

Save yourself a trip if you plan visiting the IT Centre for computer related problems as without any warning or announcement they have stopped all IT work and as their staff explained to me, they will now concentrate on Real Estate under Sawadee.com in their three Wall Street inspired structures on the ring road approaching Lamai.

[islandguy]

Needed to print something Saturday last and was surprised to see the formerly open area where you could use computers filled in with offices. Not just partitions but solid walls.

[Mole]

Business is struggling. They used to have their offices on the 2nd floor. But have now moved operation to the ground floor.

The 2nd floor will be renovated into office space for rent like they do with the 3rd floor right now.

sawadee can't simply not compete with multinational companies such as booking.com & agoda or expedia.

[crusty]

Business is struggling. They used to have their offices on the 2nd floor. But have now moved operation to the ground floor.

The 2nd floor will be renovated into office space for rent like they do with the 3rd floor right now.

sawadee can't simply not compete with multinational companies such as booking.com & agoda or expedia.

They were simply too greedy. When they first opened in the early 90's they asked for one days commission, then three days and then 15% of the guest's entire stay so we dropped them and all other self appointed "agents" and did far better operating with just walk ins, referrals and returning guests rather than working for them. If you have the right product and provide good service, people will find you.

[Bsd]

Business is struggling. They used to have their offices on the 2nd floor. But have now moved operation to the ground floor.

The 2nd floor will be renovated into office space for rent like they do with the 3rd floor right now.

sawadee can't simply not compete with multinational companies such as booking.com & agoda or expedia.

They were simply too greedy. When they first opened in the early 90's they asked for one days commission, then three days and then 15% of the guest's entire stay so we dropped them and all other self appointed "agents" and did far better operating with just walk ins, referrals and returning guests rather than working for them. If you have the right product and provide good service, people will find you.

Their website still looks like it did in the 90s and the backend for resorts is useless. The 15% commission is actually good compared to the multinationals. They need to actually spend some money on developing their systems, I am not sure where the commission money is going but it isn't being reinvested into the company.

[Mole]

Sawadee increased to 17% about 2 years ago.

Their site and backend is ancient and reminds me of DOS days.

OTAs still sends a sizeable amount of reservations, so IMO it's a bad idea not to co-operate with any of them at all.

It's really a win-win for any establishments to add their property on OTA sites. Only if you have like +90% occupancy rates, I would belive that you can do without OTAs, but realistically, I doubt you would be doing that good, especially now during low season.

In the old days, OTAs would insist in that price on their site should be equal or lower than walk-in price, but this has changed now and they're OK if prices offered on their site are higher than walk in price. This has enabled many establishments to add their properties to OTAs and set prices accordingly to offset the additional commissions that these sites add.

Nowadays, many people prefer to book through OTAs because of their convenient booking interface and promos. You're just limiting your own business by believing that you're doing just fine on your own.

Edited May 25, 2016 by Mole