The design of the new Centara echoes the Sino-Portuguese architecture of old Phuket Town.

Centara Hotels & Resorts will open its new Centara Grand Beach Resort Phuket  at Karon Beach in October this year, its fourth hotel in Phuket.

The resort will have 262 guestrooms and villas, divided between 108 deluxe rooms, 81 deluxe spa rooms, 45 pool premium rooms, 18 pool suites, six one-bed pool villas and four two-bed pool villas, along with four F&B outlets: the all-day restaurant, The Cove; the Mare Italian restaurant and bar; the Luna Chill-Out Bar and Lounge; and a Beachcomber Beach Bar.

Other facilities at the resort, the design of which references Phuket Sino-Portuguese architecture, will include a tennis court, fitness centre, a spa, a playground and two playrooms for children, one for ages 4-10 and another for ages 10-16.

Centara is part of the family-owned Thai giant Central Group, which also owns the Central Department stores (including Central Festival in Phuket and the ill-fated Central World in Bangkok, destroyed by arson in the wake of the recent Red Shirt violence); Robinson department stores; B2S bookstores; electronics retail chain PowerBuy; DIY chain Homeworks and sporting goods store chain Supersports; and a minority stake in Big C supermarkets; .

It also operates the Thailand franchises of brands such as Hong Kong drugstore chain Watson and UK retailer Marks & Spencer.

Michael Ma - "I’ve been green for 30 years."

Michael Ma’s getting pretty fit these days. It’s all that climbing up and down steps at his latest acquisition, the hillside Indochine Resort in Phuket, formerly the troubled Villa Santi property development.

The Phuket resort is a new departure for Ma’s company, the Indochine Group. It’s the group’s first venture in Thailand, and its first resort – all the other Indochine properties so far have been bars, restaurants and night clubs.

Is it hard running a resort? Not really, he says. After all, in the rooms and villas, people serve their own drinks. All the resort managers he has spoken to agreed that the food and beverage aspect is the hardest – and F&B is something Indochine knows inside and out, and on a large scale.

Each of its major outlets – five complexes in Singapore, two each in KL and Hamburg and one in Jakarta, which Dubai next on the list – can hold up to 2,000 people, and the ones in Singapore have catered to events for the International Union of Conservation for Nature, the IMF and the World Bank, along with after-event parties for the MTV Asia awards and the International Indian Film Academy Awards.

It also hosted the International Olympic 2012 Bid parties of London, New York, and Paris – all at the same time in different venues.

Apart from the big parties, individual guests have included Henry Kissinger, Michael Bloomberg, Mikhail Gorbachev, Tony Blair and his wife, Mrs. Cherie Blair, and Prince Albert of Monaco. None of these people would tolerate shoddy F&B for long.

The hardest thing about Indochine Phuket, he says, has been getting it finished. The contractor’s six months behind schedule. “This is the hardest it’s ever been,” he says. “Even in Jakarta and Delhi things went much faster than this. That’s why I need to be here right now.” But he perseveres, stumping up and down the steps to deliver instructions in Thai, Lao or English, depending on who needs chivvying along.

Ma’s Indochine Group quietly bought Villa Santi a couple of years ago. He loves the site of the resort, climbing up a hill at the north end of Patong Bay, giving it a panorama that delights Ma night and day. All his existing bars, restaurants and nightclubs – in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, India and Germany – have great views, he explains, but Indochine Phuket is the only one with a 24/7 panorama.

Daytime panorama from Indochine. At night there are the bright lights of Patong, hot air balloons and, often fireworks.

The view is an essential part of Ma’s outlook on business, his approach to tackling new projects. He explains, “I like to see the end-game first. Then I work backwards. I see the picture and I know the ending of the story. I’m a film producer and director.

“I love food, wine, partying. I’ve been doing that since I was about 14-15 years old. Then I got into art and design, so it’s an eclectic mixture of my experience. When I was a commodity trader I went to the best bars and restaurants all over the world – and you see the difference. I know exactly what I want.

“Every day, at the end of the party, there’s romance. Every day there’s drama. It’s an Oscar-winning story. So you just take that story and elongate it to eight hours a day or, in the case of the resort, 24 hours a day.”
Ma’s definitely got a sybaritic side to him – he counts beautiful people and glitterati such as Sting, David and Victoria “Posh Spice” Beckham, INXS, Gong Li and Mariah Carey among his acquaintances.

But apart from that and his palpable business acumen, he is also very serious about the environment and takes his social responsibilities as a given.

These attitudes are not PR BS. Many resorts – indeed, many corporations, even property developers – tout themselves as “green”. But few can claim among their friends Dr Ashok Khosla, President of the IUCN, the umbrella for hundreds of green activist groups, including the WWWF and Greenpeace. The IUCN is the only environmental organisation to have observer status at the UN. Ma is its Singapore representative.

In an interview, he launches immediately into an explanation of how he is striving to make Indochine Phuket as green as possible.

“It’s not that we ‘want’ to be green – I’ve been green for 30 years. We don’t do shark fin soup, bluefin tuna, yellow tuna, or sturgeon. We’ve been doing this for 11 years in Singapore and everywhere else.

“Everything that we’ve built new [at Indochine Phuket has environmental considerations in mind]. There’s double insulation, there’s LED lighting, there’s a heat exchange system going in so that whenever we turn on the aircon we get free hot water.

“Our investment level is higher but the aim is to reduce power consumption. We’re looking at composting. Anything non-dairy, non-protein will be separated for local pig farms. Any plant trimmings will be turned into fertiliser.

“Our ‘timber’ decking is 50% recycled plastic, 50% rice hull. All the plastic chairs you see are recycled plastic with UV inhibitor so they’re built to be light and last for years. That’s the sort of spec we’re going for.”

Whenever possible, locally-sourced materials are used, not just because they may be cheaper, but because transporting them produces less CO2 than if they were brought, say, from Bangkok.

Similarly, for many companies, corporate social responsibility (CSR) is something they feel they must do in order to show they are good corporate citizens – with a helpful PR spinoff.

Ma, however, was taking his social responsibilities seriously long before he went into business. In Australia, where he grew up after his family fled the arrival of the communist regime in his native Laos, he acted, when he was just 16 or 17, as an interpreter between the Indochinese community (many of whom could speak little or no English) and the authorities and NGOs.

Through interpreting, Ma met the Mayor of Sydney and other politicians, and soon graduated into an advocacy role. He was urged to go into politics and joined the more conservative of the two main political parties, the Liberals. This was not, he explained, because he had political ambitions, o because his views are right wing – far from it – but because someone pointed out that the Liberals had no members with Southeast Asian backgrounds.

“I joined so that I could maybe counterbalance some of the people on the extreme right – the Pauline Hansons and so on.” In 1990 he was voted Young Liberal of the Year.

Twenty years on, and he is still involved in supporting the community, locally and in a much wider way. In Singapore, he says, he is on the board of such entities as Action for Community Enterprise, and is a consultant with the National Environment Agency and the Urban Redevelopment Authority.

Naturally, the company is involved. In the recent past, Indochine has organised events supporting tsunami relief, aid to children with HIV and heart research. This is in addition to its Green Festival, aimed at raising awareness of the issues before the Copenhagen Summit on climate change.

All of these has a strong fun element, reflecting Ma’s own philosophy of life. He’s not going to go as far as giving up his good food, wine and partying to go live in a cave in order to save the environment. And he’s not going to give up his stretch limo. “People ask me how I can be green and have a stretch limo. I tell them it can carry eight people with the same engine as the four-seat version,” he grins.

Dewa Resort, at Nai Yang Beach, is the latest to sign up LaTour for its management expertise.

LaTour Hotels & Resorts of San Diego, California, which recently signed up to manage the Indochine Resort in Kalim,  has signed up its second property in Phuket: The Dewa at Nai Yang.

In a public statement, Phuket landmark Lars Ydmark, the boss of Tri-Asia, which developed and owns the hotel, explained, “We’re excited to put Dewa Phuket Resort into LaTour Hotels & Resorts’ group of managed properties and welcome their team’s expertise and guidance in providing premier services.

“By introducing Latour, we will only enhance further what we have already achieved and thereby add more value for all our individual home owners at Dewa Phuket. As the saying goes, more tools in the tool box.”

LaTour is a new name in the hotel business, founded just a couple of years ago, and with just nine properties in its portfolio – four in the US, three in Mexico and, now, two in Thailand.

However, it does have a great deal of experience in it’s senior management team. Founder, chairman and CEO Thomas LaTour was for many years the boss of Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants, growing it from one hotel to 45 during his tenure. He is also a big wheel in ResortCom International.

In fact, most of the top management of LaTour and ResortCom are the same people.

In case you were wondering, ResortCom International – despite the coincidence of names – is not affiliated to timeshare exchange giant RCI, though John Small, chairman of ResortCom and vice-chairman of LaTour, once worked for RCI Management – an RCI subsidiary which manages timeshare properties, but doesn’t sell timeshare. And ResortCom also boats that it “can provide a fully integrated platform and 100% of the operational and back office services for a timeshare or fractional resort developer” Clear?

Be that as it may, Ydmark says that there will be no timeshare at Dewa, which is part-resort, part-privately owned apartments. “LaTour is a manager of high-end mixed-use boutique resorts so that fits perfectly with what we have. That’s why we’re delighted to get in bed with them,” he said.

Pool suite at Andara. In this case, the pool has a blue bottom.

In Phuket, the magazine chose Andara Resort & Villas in Kamala, which opened officially just two months ago. The reviewer seems most impressed with the electronics, particularly the “wicked 52-inch LCD television in [the] living room”, and goes on to drool over the Bose stereo system and the Gaggia coffee machine.

The writer finally turns to the more pedestrian delights of five-star travel – the “black-bottom infinity pool [that] attracts an array of beautiful bodies”, the beach club and the motor yachts.

The JW Marriott Khao Lak - not actually in Khao Lak, but close.

The second local resort in the list is the new JW Marriott Khao Lak Resort & Spa at Khuk Kak Beach in Phang Nga, just north of Khao Lak, which opened in November last year. The reviewer more conventionally highlights the “postcard-perfect setting”, noting that “the resort itself is up to snuff”. That’s a relief.

But this reviewer is definitely a foodie. Counting the words, around 40% are reserved for restaurant descriptions. The electronics are not mentioned.

Finally, Traveler chose the new Phulay Bay all-suites/villas resort at Phulay Bay, about 10km (as the crow flies) to the northwest of Ao Nang in Krabi. The resort, which opened just before Christmas, and which is managed by Ritz-Carlton – it’s the first in the world to carry the group’s Reserve brand -  makes the list despite the “disappointing” beach, the “rocky” shallows and the “unsightly dredging complex” offshore.

Don't spill your coffee, please - living area in one of the Phulay Bay suites.

But it does have all that’s required for personal hygiene, the reviewer writes: “lotus-shaped sinks, double-headed rain showers, and outdoor tubs.” Very good for washing off Icelandic volcano ash.

Sadly, no local venues made the nightlife or spa Hot Lists this year. But then, three local resorts out of a worldwide list of 134 (in 55 countries) is still impressive.

It should be noted, too, that the Traveler reviewers slip in and out without telling anyone they are coming, and paying their own hotel bills – so this is one of the most honest lists out there, and therefore one that carries enormous promotional weight for the properties that are featured. For all the lists, go here.

One-bedroom beachfront pool villa at the Renaissance.

The new Renaissance Phuket Resort & Spa, which held its soft opening recently, is the second resort on the 11km-long beach to be managed by Marriott International. The first was the well-established JW Marriot Phuket Resort & Spa, which opened eight years ago.

The four-floor Renaissance, which has 150 guest rooms and 30 pool villas, is just south of the Sala Phuket Resort and not far from its sister hotel. Apart from the guest rooms and suites it has six meeting rooms totaling 2,917 sq ft of space.

It also has five F&B outlets. These are the Seakram Thai restaurant; the beachside Sandbox with barbecue; Loca Vore, “a contemporary restaurant with rustic appeal driven by the concept of ‘fresh ingredients’,” with diners choosing from among the ingredients and deciding how they would like them cooked;  The Lounge pub next to the lobby; and the Doppio coffee house and bakery.

To “celebrate the opening” the resort is offering its deluxe rooms at B5,555 a night and pool villas at B8,888. The offer is valid until May 31. For more details, see the resort website.

The communal pool at the Absolute Nakalay Beach Resort.

When the Global Financial Crisis hit Phuket, Martin Platts found his income soaring. Platts is the self-proclaimed “Golf Guru” of the island. Well, it sounds better than “coach”, doesn’t it?

He put his new-found wealth down to all those property developers who found themselves sitting in an office devoid of buyers and decided that they might be better off improving their game.

But not all developers have been having a barren time. One exception to the rule has been the Absolute group of party guy Brian Lunt, which has been completing project after project and also snapping up management contracts for smaller hotels and resorts that have been finding the going hard.

The company’s Absolute Resorts Thailand subsidiary, headed by highly respected hotelier Supachart Ruamsamu, now has eight properties under management – seven in Phuket and one in Pattaya – and is looking at taking on another six in the near future – three on Koh Samui, two in Phuket and one in Pattaya.

Two of these are being developed in collaboration with Yoo, the vehicle of French über-designer Philippe Starck.

Supachart admits it’s hard work, but he’s happy with the results he’s been getting, particularly at the pretty but formerly moribund Chandara Resort on the east coast of Phuket. “The owner’s very happy,” he told the Observer.

The latest property is the Absolute Nakalay Beach Resort in Phuket, which opened officially on January 27. Halfway between Patong and Kamala, on the west coast, it was developed by Absolute and follows the same model as the company’s other developments (and many thers these days) – they build and sell the apartments, and then manage them as a hotel so that apartment owners get (theoretically at least) an income when they are not in residence.

Room in then Absolute Nakalay Beach Resort.

Absolute Nakalay is small – just 33 apartments ranging from studio through two- and three-bedroom to penthouse suites complete with rooftop gardens equipped with jacuzzi and dip pool.

It’s smart, quiet, well designed and well equipped. All rooms have balconies, DVD players, cable TV and Wi-Fi. There’s also a communal swimming pool and gym, and indoor and outdoor eating areas (set meals only at present).

The place is easy to get to – it’s just off the main Patong-Kamala road – and is about 10 minutes from the heart of the action in Patong, yet quiet enough for those recovering from all that action.

Rates range upwards from B6,00 a night. For more information or for bookings, send email here. The property is listed on Agoda, but at present it doesn’t seem to be possible to make bookings that way.

Deluxe Garden View room at the J W Marriott.

Three resorts in Phuket appear is this year’s Condé Nast Traveler magazine Gold List, which lists the “best places to stay in the world, selected by the readers”.

In first resort in Phuket is the JW Marriott with an overall score of 91.4 out of a possible 100. The JW this year makes its sixth appearance in the list, having been a regular since 2005.

The Marriott is followed by Amanpuri, Adrian Zecha’s hideaway for the rich and famous, which is also a regular on the Gold List, having appeared in it every year since 2007. It scored 89.5

The third Phuket resort to make the list is Banyan Tree Phuket which, like Amanpuri, makes its fourth appearance. It scored 87.9.

The magazine asks its readers to rate hotels they know on quality of rooms, service, food, location, design and activities. The highest score in Thailand – a near-perfect 98.9 – went to the Four Seasons Tented Camp Golden Triangle. It scored 100 on every aspect apart from location and design.

No beach, but Cape Sienna has jaw-dropping views over Kamala Bay and a chic ambience.

Cape Sienna, the chic cliff-top resort on Millionaires’ Mile, Kamala, is the most romantic hotel in Asia, and the fourth-most romantic in the world, according to the 2010 Tripadvisor Travelers’ Choice survey.

Cape Sienna (website here), which opened just 10 months ago, also ranked eighth in Asia in the survey’s “Relaxation & Spa” category.

Apart from Cape Sienna, however, Phuket hotels and resorts were more remarkable for their absence from the survey’s top 10s.

The Sugar Palm in Kata - scores in the 'Trendiest' category.

Only three other resorts made the lists: The Sugar Palm Grand in Kata was the second “Trendiest” in Asia (though it failed to appear in the top 10 worldwide) and the J W Marriott on Mai Khao Beach was fifth and the Holiday Inn, Patong, eighth in Asia in the “Family” category (though neither appear in the worldwide Top 10).

Phuket failed to get into the Top 10 in any of the other categories, which were: Bargain, Best Service, B&B and Inns, All Inclusive and Luxury.

TripAdvisor does not explain its methodology in coming to these results, but according to hotelmarketing.com, the website uses a proprietory search technology “to scour the Web for articles, reviews and opinions published on various travel topics including hotel properties”. The site’s claimed 10 million members are also asked to rate and review properties they have stayed in – and many do so.

HotelMarketing explains (here): “TripAdvisor assigns each hotel a “popularity index” based on the quantity and quality of data.” It then “ranks the hotels in each city and then region based on their web popularity score”.

Sea views and infinity-edge pool, naturally - view from one of the villas. - Photo courtesy Andara.

Andara Resort & Villas, the recently opened resort element at the Andara villa development in Kamala, is already drawing rave reviews, despite being a month or so away from its official opening.

One guest, writing on TripAdvisor.com commented, “Wow, this place will blow you away – ultimate in luxury but without the price tag.” Another wrote, “We have stayed in numerous 5 star hotels around the world, but I can truly say this is one of the finest experiences we have ever had.”

So they reckon it’s pretty good, then.

Andara started out as a very high-end villa development near one end of what has come to be known as Millionaires’ Mile because of all the other very high-end villas perched along the hillside. One acquaintance of PhuketObserver.com bought a place at Andara right at the beginning for US$2 million, and says he’s recently been offered $5 million for it.

Now the developer, Hong Kong “taipan” Allan Zeman, has added hotel facilities with full resort amenities (40m swimming pool, beach club, gym, wine cellar, concierge, spa, etc etc), creating a very tasty resort and also generating revenue for villa owners when they’re not staying there themselves. The resort currently consists of 37 apartments and 26 villas, ranging in size up to six bedrooms.

Adding lustre is the highly-respected Silk restaurant, formerly on the top floor of the nearby Surin Plaza shopping centre (also created by the ever-busy Mr Zeman). It has now been moved to Andara.

Bored of all that landward luxury? Get some on the water instead, aboard the yacht Andara. - Photo courtesy Andara.

The GM of the resort is Andrew Whitaker, appointed last September. He moved to Phuket from the Amara Sanctuary on Singapore’s Sentosa Island. His CV includes 12 years in management of upmarket clubs in Asia, and six years at GM level with the luxury Shangri-La hotels chain.

Rack rates range from around $700 a night for a one-bedroom terrace suite up to $4,480 for a six-bedroom villa (fill it with 12 adults and that’s just 373 buck apiece, or a pretty reasonable 11.500 baht a night).

And in case you ever get bored of all this luxury on land, you can experience more on the water, by chartering the resort’s own 85-foot Italian motor yacht called, yes, Andara. US$3,500-4,000 a day, depending on the season, for up to 16 passengers.

For more info and guaranteed best rates click here.

The Mangosteen sits high on a hill, with broad views of the southern end of Phuket.

The owners of the privately run Mangosteen Boutique Resort & Spa in Rawai have signed a management and marketing deal with Golden Tulip Hospitality Group of the Netherlands. It is Golden Tulip’s first venture in Thailand.

The deal was signed recently at the resort by Hajo von Keller, Mangosteen’s managing director, and Mark van Ogtrop, MD of Golden Tulip Southeast Asia.

Hajo von Keller (left) and Mark van Ogtrop shake on the deal.

“We  are … delighted  that  our  first footprint in the Thai hospitality market is in Phuket.  We hope to re-position The Mangosteen  as  a  unique Ayurveda  destination,  offering  very  special Ayurveda treatments to our guests for ultimate relaxation,” van Ogtrop remarked.

Van Keller said, “In  selecting  Golden  Tulip  to  manage  our  resort,  we  are confident  that  the  resort  will  be  taken  to  the  next  level  of  being internationally  recognized  and  promoted.    We  will  also  be  able  to  take advantage  of  Golden  Tulip’s  extensive  expertise  and  customer  base  to further  attract  guests  from  Europe,  the  Americas,  Middle  East,  Africa  as well as within the Asia-Pacific region.”

The resort, which opened five years ago, has 41 guest villas, a restaurant, spa and pool. It sits atop a hill with wide views across the south of the island. The resort also has a shuttle bus service to take guests to nearby Nai Harn Beach.

Van Keller told the Observer that what was particularly attractive about the deal was the access it gives the resort to Golden Tulip’s international marketing organisation. Up until now, the Mangosteen has been a stand-alone property, trying to attract guests in the face of large groups such as Hilton, Marriott and many other large chains.

He added that a new GM has been appointed for the resort. He is Claude Baltes, lately of West Sands and, before that, the Evason Phuket, which is just down the road from the Mangosteen.

Interior of one of the guest villas at The Mangosteen.

“We will share him with another Golden Tulip property on the island,” he explained, “which is good for us as it keeps down costs.” He said that he could not name the other hotel because the deal with Golden Tulip has yet to be sealed.

In addition to the resort, the Mangosteen’s owners also have 16 rai of land next door, currently for sale. “It could be sold outright,” von Keller said, “or an investor might want to take a stake in Mangosteen, allowing the land to be developed with the villas to be managed by us.”

Golden Tulip was founded 50 years ago and its website lists around 350 hotels in 38 cities worldwide, though the Mangosteen is the group’s first foray into Thailand.

Before joining Golden Tulip in 2007, van Ogtrop had a long career in hotel management. Most recently he was GM of the Silken Berlaymont Hotel in Brussels for seven years. He was also GM of the Dusit Laguna Resort in Phuket for several years, and so knows the island well.