Promoting A New Bungalow Resort

[krayner]

The wife's brother has been building a beach resort with 9 bungalows in the south of Ranong province with financial investment from me. They are now ready to open and just wonder what lengths they should go to to promote the place, other than the obvious.

They have done the usual and arranged with resorts in Khao Sok and Ko Phayam to promote each other. I think that they have targeted agents in Khoa San Road. A web site will be finished soon, I have my doubts that this will generate much custom, but what else should they do.

They need a listing in Lonely Planet but that will not pay off until after the next new issue. They also need to target agents and guest houses in Ranong town and the bus stations at Ranong and Takuapa. Does anybody have any ideas as to what they should be addressing to promote the place.

They are close to Khura Buri so I am expecting them to pick up trade to and from Ko Surin.

[sbk]

Are they backpacker type bungalows? Frankly, word of mouth is the best form of advertisement for backpackers. Good food, decent service, friendly atmosphere and decent rooms, eventually will bring in custom. Unfortunately, it does take a while to build up

If you provide value for money and all of the above then using touts (that don't lie) could work quite well. They could, at least, build up the business in the beginning.

The problem with a lot of the booking agents on Khao San road is that they sell the room for higher than the walk-in rate. Usually double. So, they sell it for 800 baht and give the owner 400. Imagine someone's dismay when they show up to find they are paying double what their neighbor is!

[krayner]

Are they backpacker type bungalows? Frankly, word of mouth is the best form of advertisement for backpackers. Good food, decent service, friendly atmosphere and decent rooms, eventually will bring in custom. Unfortunately, it does take a while to build up

If you provide value for money and all of the above then using touts (that don't lie) could work quite well. They could, at least, build up the business in the beginning.

The problem with a lot of the booking agents on Khao San road is that they sell the room for higher than the walk-in rate. Usually double. So, they sell it for 800 baht and give the owner 400. Imagine someone's dismay when they show up to find they are paying double what their neighbor is!

They are what I would call mid range. A little bit upmarket for a backpacker, well a backpacer on a tight budet anyway. I think that this is where they have failed a littlebit. I have banged on to them for ages to build some very cheap bungalows just to get punters in then get on the grapevine but hopefully now that they are ready to open they can knock up quickly a few simple bungalows.

Getting the restaurant finished, the electricity, water and endless permissions to open and backhanders has been the focus the last few months.

I didn't realise that the Khao San mark up was so great but then people take the choice don't they.

[kayo]

i opened a bungalow resort in 2001 on koh chang. we had three high end bungalows and 27 low and medium range ones, bar and a very good and very inexpensive (info for the op to relate to as he chooses) restaurant.

we promoted it primarily through word of mouth. it was a good place, so w-o-m worked very well.

Other measures we took (inexpensive) were logging onto travelers websites and mentioning it regularly.

going to the nearby "tourist hub" in our case Trat city, as this is where many travelers would arrive before going to Koh Chang, and becoming friendly with some of the more popular guest houses (primarily getting to know them, but sometimes the odd night at our resort given free board or a free meal or something, for example) in exchange for letting us put info sheets, paper ads, and generally having hte guest houses in Trat mention us.

In time our guests started to come from the capital too, among which sometimes people who worked on KSR travel and/or guest houses.

These people were usually friendly to us, as they had already stayed as genuine guests and so there we built relationships too.

I think we made it into a Rough Guide, about a year and a half after opening. I missed the dude if he/she visited our place. Either didn't spot him, or I was away.

we didn't generally enter into contracts with any agents as we were still starting up and fairly poor, young and not very wise, but we did okay.

Above all it was w-o-mouth that fed our business. People enjoyed their stays and would talk about us as they continued their travels.

I would often ask people who were had had a good stay to do this too, some of whom even took flyers and business cards and passed them on to other travelers.

[krayner]

i opened a bungalow resort in 2001 on koh chang. we had three high end bungalows and 27 low and medium range ones, bar and a very good and very inexpensive (info for the op to relate to as he chooses) restaurant.

we promoted it primarily through word of mouth. it was a good place, so w-o-m worked very well.

Other measures we took (inexpensive) were logging onto travelers websites and mentioning it regularly.

going to the nearby "tourist hub" in our case Trat city, as this is where many travelers would arrive before going to Koh Chang, and becoming friendly with some of the more popular guest houses (primarily getting to know them, but sometimes the odd night at our resort given free board or a free meal or something, for example) in exchange for letting us put info sheets, paper ads, and generally having hte guest houses in Trat mention us.

In time our guests started to come from the capital too, among which sometimes people who worked on KSR travel and/or guest houses.

These people were usually friendly to us, as they had already stayed as genuine guests and so there we built relationships too.

I think we made it into a Rough Guide, about a year and a half after opening. I missed the dude if he/she visited our place. Either didn't spot him, or I was away.

we didn't generally enter into contracts with any agents as we were still starting up and fairly poor, young and not very wise, but we did okay.

Above all it was w-o-mouth that fed our business. People enjoyed their stays and would talk about us as they continued their travels.

I would often ask people who were had had a good stay to do this too, some of whom even took flyers and business cards and passed them on to other travelers.

Interesting stuff. Luckily you have started in a location that is already established. This place is quite remote so there is no pre-existing tourist trade at all so they are starting small with just 9 bungalows to see how it goes.

They are going to put a large sign on Highway 4, the main road from Takupa to Ranong and Chumpon, so that any passing trade on a bus will at least be aware of the place.

Apparently it costs 30000baht a year to have the road sign there. They also want to push visa runs as they are only about an hour from Ranong.

They could do with an airline operator going into ranong airport as well.

[sbk]

PM me details and/or website , I'll be happy to let people staying at our place know about it

[londonthai]

having a good website gives your resort credibility - you can put pictures and update the site with a seasonal discounts if you are slow. Can save you a lot on printing full colours broshures.

it takes time and some effort for the website to be well positioned on the search engines (and especially on google) - but the sooner you start it the less competition you face. After that it's a free traffic.