IHG Picks Bangkok for First voco Hotel in SE Asia

Main Photo: A voco hotel bedroom

Date: January 2019

Location: Sukhumvit area of Bangkok, near Nana BTS station, Thailand

Name: voco Bangkok Sukhumvit 11 – opening 2021

No. of Keys: 300

Developer: Bangkok’s B&G Estate Co. who have signed a management agreement with IHG for a new-build Voco-branded hotel in Bangkok — the first to be announced in South East Asia.

The company behind Interchange 21, B&G Park Co., Ltd., is a joint venture between Bischoff Textil AG Swiss and the well-known Srichawla family with a registered capital of Baht 500 million.

Bischoff Textil AG has been registered as a traditional textile company in St. Gallen in Switzerland since 1927. The name has come to stand for exclusive design and high-quality fashion.

Bishoff Textil AG’s primary customers are companies which produce clothing and household textiles. Today the textile company from St. Gallen has branches in London, Milan, Lustenau (Austria), New York and Los Angeles as well as joint ventures in Turkey, the United States and Thailand.

The Srichawla family is a major shareholder of the FICO Group which was founded in 1947. The group’s initial business ventures were related to textile trading, however the scope and scale of their business has expanded over the decades. Following a major reorganisation of the group, Fico Corporation was set up in 1993 as the parent company.

Since then Fico Corporation has grown significantly to cover business activities in sectors such as hospitality, commercial real estate, luxury retail, manufacturing and trading of textiles and commodities, engineering and technology, and entertainment and media. Today, the group encompasses more than 50 companies.

Fico in it’s own right is a hotel company, owning the UK’s Jupiter hotels and several hotels in Thailand, mostly under the Accor brands.

The hotel will have a rooftop restaurant and bar, a swimming pool and pool bar, as well as a fitness centre. The hotel will also be equipped with meeting facilities able to accommodate up to 400 guests, with the largest meeting room capacity of 200 guests.

Commenting on this signing, Clarence Tan, managing director, South-east Asia & Korea, IHG said: “As the world’s most visited destination, Bangkok represents an excellent launch market for one of the newest additions to our brand portfolio.

B&G Estate, headed up by Theprit Srichawla,  owns and operates a retail and corporate property, Interchange 21, and has plans to grow its hospitality portfolio.

THPT Comment: IHG has 24 hotels operating under five brands in Thailand, including: InterContinental, Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn Express and Hotel Indigo, with another 27 in the development pipeline for the next three to five years. The name of the hotel suggests they plan many voco hotels in Bangkok?

First Seen: TTG Asia

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