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Fewer hotel rooms will
be available in February
Three major events - the BOI Fair 2000, the annual
meeting of the United Nations Conference of Trade and Development, and the
Chinese New Year festival have brought hundreds of thousands of visitors
flying into the Kingdom, making this February one of the busiest months in
recent memory. Chinese New Year alone was expected to bring in about
120,000 Chinese tourists to spend their lunar New Year holidays here.
“Nearly 500 special flights have been arranged by
several airlines to help the flow of visitors to Thailand in February,”
an airport administrator said. “There will be 50-60 extra flights from
China, Hong Kong and Taiwan on February 5-6,” he said.
About 90% of the hotel rooms in Bangkok have been
reserved between February 1 and February 19, while almost no rooms will be
available in Pattaya during that time.
The number of Chinese tourists has increased a good deal this year
compared to about 90,000 who visited Thailand during the lunar New Year in
1999. More than 3,000 rooms in Bangkok have been reserved for UNCTAD
participants from February 12-19.
Hunsa.com aims to become
No.1 website in Thailand
Kriangsak Hiranvuttikul, well known among web surfers
as “Mr. Hunsa”, the managing director of hunsa.com, announced plans to
make hunsa.com the country’s no. 1 website by 2001. 40% of hunsa.com is
owned by Shin Corp.
Hunsa.com is a well known Thai website based in Chiang
Mai. Its great success is proven by the 40,000 hits/day it received last
year, which has become 60,000 hits/day currently. There are 2 other
websites in Thailand that have higher hit rates per day than hunsa.com.
Mr. Hunsa said that his development target for hunsa.com is to expand
its customer base to business people, working ages and elderly people
instead of focusing only on young people and students, like in the past.
Education on e-commerce will be used to attract these new groups of
members.
Metro System increases
capital to expand services
Metro System Corporation informed the SET of its plan
for a 60% increase of its capital in Application Hosting Services Co.,
Ltd. - a service provider of Oracle application programs, valued at 1.8
million baht.
The additional investment is to add and expand computer
services to customers. New services will enable customers to decrease
expenses and at the same time the company can maintain its investment
ratio, which will make a return to form of dividends and better customer
services.
Metro System Corporation is a distributor of IBM computers, printers
and office automations. At the end of 1999, Metro System had 1.774 billion
baht in assets, 1.356 billion baht liability, and 415 million baht
capital. Total revenue was 2.370 billion baht and total losses amounted to
28 million baht.
Internet providers see
early boom in job services
Internet providers and operators of employment web
sites said they have received many more hits to their sites since late
last year, even though more players had entered into this local market.
Jobs & Adverts, a job-on-the-net service, said a
survey in October last year showed that employment web sites received
65,000-90,000 hits per day, 85% of which were employed Thais looking for
new jobs.
Datchaneepron Panchalee, marketing manager of Jobs DB
(Thailand) said their homepage has had at least 5,000 visitors a day since
it opened in September 1999. More than 1,000 companies or businesses have
subscribed to the service.
Loxley Information Service, which hosts ‘Job Loxinfo’
job service site, said it made 150,000 baht a month from advertising jobs
and employment from 250 companies.
Job Loxinfo receives about 3,000 hits per day, and 90% of the people
who apply for jobs on the net receive interviews. Fujitsu (Thailand) and
Sony Thai said job advertising on the Internet was satisfactory,
convenient and economical. Two other local job sites - ThaiEjob and
JobSiam - have also enjoyed early success.
Software: Lotus sets 4
strategies to best Microsoft
Lotus is showing its readiness to do business in 2000,
and its next step into the ISP business, by announcing 4 strategies to
take market shares away from Microsoft and increase revenue by 15%.
Karoon Techaburapanon, general manager of Lotus
Development International Corporation, declared 4 strategies to achieve
the position of software market leader ญ 1. Focus on messaging
services; 2. Introduce E-business applications; 3. Penetrate into the
training market using the web; and 4. Hit the knowledge management market
or KM.
Instead of forcing users to totally change their system
when using Lotus, this year Lotus will enable users to adjust and adopt
Lotus applications to work compatibly with their current operating system.
Lotus’ other plans for 2000 include concentrating more on application
services and expanding into ISP and telecommunications businesses.
Colgate uses
entertainment to attract consumers at BOI Fair
Colgate-Palmolive (Thailand) will be working with R. S.
Promotions (1992) to have R. S.’s singers and artists join Colgate’s
booth at the BOI Fair from 3-14 February.
“This cooperation with R.S. Promotion will be the
first time we’ve used entertainment marketing in product promotion to
attract consumers. Consumers have more stress in their daily life during
an economic crisis and pay more attention to entertainment,” said Del
Evin, marketing manager for Colgate-Palmolive.
Colgate-Palmolive will be spending more than 10 million
baht in this campaign, excluding the expenses of entertainment on stage.
The aim is to create product brand name recognition rather than to sell
products during the fair.
Colgate plans to gain consumers’ confidence by
showing its production technology. Premium products will be given away to
visitors.
“Discount” is not a main strategy, since Colgate believes that
visitors to their booth intend to buy products.
Compaq affiliates with
Mweb
GE Capital to hit Internet market
Chaiwat Shyangkoon, managing director of Compaq
Computer (Thailand), said Compaq’s policy this year is to mainly
concentrate on Internet business with an aim to support organizational
uses of Internet and E-commerce.
Customers are classified into 3 sub groups: 1. PC for
organizational uses, 2. Consumer group, 3. Solution and services group,
which provides technical support in servers and networking.
As for a marketing plan, Compaq joined hands with Mweb
Thailand, an Internet expert, and launched a special easy-and-ready-to-use
e-commerce package which contains computer, server and homepage designing,
as well as computer leasing services from GE Capital, at a 5,000 baht
start-up price.
The promotional package will be the first launched during the BOI Fair
and will focus on SME customers. “Projects at the BOI Fair will be our
first cooperation with Mweb. This year we still have plans to run
affiliated activities in many other projects,” Chaiwat said.
Copyright 2000 Pattaya Mail Publishing Co.Ltd.
370/7-8 Pattaya Second Road, Pattaya City, Chonburi 20260, Thailand
Tel.66-38 411 240-1, 413 240-1, Fax:66-38 427 596; e-mail: [email protected]
Updated by Chinnaporn Sangwanlek,
assisted by Boonsiri Suansuk. |
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