A Study of the Hotel Renovation Project Management Process in Thailand

Tourism and hotel industry is the one of the major sectors that plays an important role in the economic development of every country. The tourism and hotel industry also supports the growth of other industries, provided that when the tourism and hotel industry area is developed, the business activities will increase as a whole. Thus, the satisfying performance of the tourism and hotel sector is vital key for the prosper beginning of several other parts of the economy. In Thailand, the tourism and hotel industry is a crucial component which greatly influences the economic growth. Tourism is increasing each year which is the reason why, most hotels in Thailand always renovated their hotel to keep up with the competition, to maintain or increase market share by satisfying the current or potential customers, to upgrade the hotel to a higher category, to comply with the new trends and technology and to maintain image and standard.

But hotel renovation projects are very complicated. The process consists of four fundamental interrelated factors involved therein, which are driver analyses, planning and controlling, implementation, and evaluation (Ahmed Hassanien, 2007).

Ms. Atcharaporn Suwan made a research with these set objectives (1) to investigate major problem and specific obstacles occurring in hotel renovation projects; (2) to investigate the existing practice of hotel renovation project management process from the viewpoints of hotelier, consultant and contractor; and (3) to propose the recommendation to improve the hotel renovation project management process.

According to her data analysis, most of external parties that comprise of consultant and contractors have agreed that the two main obstacles of hotel renovation project are lack of money from the owner. This is because some case studies had to set the unrealistic budget and already the budget is fixed from the owner at the first tendering process. Moreover the budget was limited since over budget from the mock up room at the first stage.

Another result of her data analysis is that most of internal party has agrees that the two main obstacles of hotel renovation project is time limitation. The hotelier would like to finish renovation work before high season period in order to gain more revenue during that time and doesn’t want to disturbed their customer. Therefore the period of renovation work was limited base on the traveling season.

Her thesis abstract is copied and posted.

ABSTRACT

Tourism and hotel industry is one major earning of Thailand’s economy, as well as, tourism satisfactions of hotel play the important role among hotel market. Increasing of tourism in each year will affected hotel industry. Therefore most of hotels in Thailand always renovated their hotel for various reasons. However, according to the nature of renovation project will often be subject to a number of diverse constraints. Some may be of a physical and dimensional nature; others are imposed by design considerations. There are various considerations that arise from the original construction. Moreover renovating the hotel and maintaining hotel activities, problems in managing the scope of renovation project and complicated hotel renovation process have been considered as well. These aspects of the hotel renovation process are not well understood and there are a small number of papers that analyze renovation behavior in Thailand.

In order to understand the hotel renovation process, therefore the objectives of this research are established to 1) investigate major problem and specific obstacles occurring in hotel renovation projects, 2) investigate the existing practice of hotel renovation project management process from the viewpoints of hotelier, consultant and contractor and 3) propose the recommendation to improve the hotel renovation project management process.

The data was collected from interview survey in three large scale hotel renovation project of the major destination of Thailand such as Bangkok and Chiangmai. The interviewee has been separated in to two group of each project. First group is internal party that comprise of hotelier, general manager and chief engineer. Second group is external party that comprise of consultant and contractor. The findings were already explained in detail and recommendations for improvement were propose in this study.