Hospitality
The Female Entrepreneur
that Helmed Thailand’s Hospitality Industry
Where should the insatiable ambition of Dusit Thani International, a Thai multinational hospitality company committed to opening minimum of 10-12 hotels annually and establishing a new brood of 60 properties, eye for its next move on the global chessboard of economically-propitious destinations but Sathorn, Bangkok’s thriving central business district embedded in a riveting mosaic of local enterprise, cultural rhythms, and tradition?
Thanpuying Chanut Piyaoui and her Dusit Thani’s Team
Image created by www.dusit-international.com
The opening of “The Princess” in 1949 marked Thailand’s entry into the early chapters of the era of global tourism. Remarkably, in an economic arena dominated by men, the hand that orchestrated this overture, and that would guide Thailand’s tourism industry into the 21st century with magisterial command, belonged to a woman. In comparison to the 72,000 international arrivals that stream into the country daily nowadays, the dignitaries and airline crew who reposed among the 60 rooms of Charoenkrung Road’s first hotel may not seem like much, but at the time, Thanpuying Chanut Piyaoui, who would go on to rack up a litany of extraordinary accomplishments, had turned tradition on its head.
Dusit Thani in 1948
Image created by www.dusit-international.com
In the geopolitical foment of the Cold War, as the American military developed a base of operations in Thailand and ramped up massacres in Vietnam, Thanpuying Chanut Piyaoui saw opportunity in the influx of American expats into Bangkok and expanded the Princess Hotel. It was Thailand’s first hotel to tender luxury hospitality to guests, and boasted a swimming pool. The “Dusit Thani Bangkok” followed in 1970. Twenty three stories high and topped with a golden spire, it was the tallest building in the country at the time: a monumental five-star hotel that offered incontestable views of a rapidly-modernizing city to its guests. It was a legendary hotel that, fittingly, lodged legends in its rooms: Jackie Chan, Margaret Thatcher, Coldplay, Whitney Houston and Tom Jones.
Dusit Thani Reopening
Image created by www.dusit-international.com
The Dusit Thani Bangkok was demolished in 2019 to make way for a new development complex, yet the end of the hotel’s reign rings with distinctive triumph. In the intervening years since the hotel’s opening, Thanpuying Chanut Piyaoui’s ventures became a multinational hospitality company, Dusit Thani International, with properties in 16 countries, such as the Philippines, the Middle East, India, China, the United States and the Maldives. She founded the Dusit Thani College, which has produced graduates accomplished in the art of hospitality for over twenty years. Thanpuying Chanut Piyaoui was the quintessential entrepreneur; she understood the ways of the market: she knew to differentiate herself from her competitors, to assimilate cultural shifts, to constantly expand and diversify her business. The Dusit Thani Bangkok not only outscaled other hotels in size, it redefined the very parameters of hospitality in the city, becoming the first hotel in Bangkok to feature a discotheque nightclub, ballroom and a penthouse restaurant, prefiguring the amenities of today’s modern hotels. Decades before “girlboss” entered popular parlance, Thanpuying Chanut Piyaoui had taken to the skies.
Thanpuying Chanut Piyaoui and her Dusit Thani’s Team
Image created by www.dusit-international.com
Thanpuying Chanut Piyaoui made commerce coextensive with national identity: an oracle modeling “soft power” diplomacy a half-century before the self-commodification of nations would become foreign policy convention.
With characteristic prescience, Thanpuying Chanut Piyaoui knew to position the aspects of Thai culture that make it unique– the people, food and customs of this country– at the heart of the Dusit Thani brand, summed up in the company website’s catchphrase, “Thainess”. In an admittedly brilliant maneuver that not only ensured Dusit Thani’s timeless appeal to travelers, but would encode the preservation of Thailand’s culture and heritage into the very DNA of the brand,
Dusit Thani’s Room
Image created by https://www.dusit.com/dusitthani-bangkok
Dusit Thani Room
Image created by www.dusit.com/dusitthani-bangkok
As Dusit Thani International advances and enshrines its foundational values, it should come as no surprise that the company closed out 2023 with the opening ASAI Bangkok Sathorn, a chic lifestyle hotel, on Sathorn soi 12. For Sathorn is one of the city’s beloved neighborhoods, once the residence of Thai nobles, now home to corporate and residential high-rises enveloped in a colorful quilt of cafes, art galleries, fine-dining restaurants and stylish bars. It is the confluence of tradition and modernity, Bangkok’s history and future; where the Chao Phraya River, the city’s ancient artery of maritime commerce, limns towering satellites of global capital. It’s where Dusit Thani International’s multifaceted identity fits right in.