Could you introduce Dusit to our readers, a world-class brand bringing the Thai hospitality to the world?

We were founded nearly 70 years ago in 1948. Our founder believed Thailand could be a must visit for many people. On her travels, she felt that maybe she could bring in that best practice for international standards for the hotel to Thailand and combine it with Thai hospitality to create something unique. She started a small hotel called the Princess Hotel in Bangkok, at the time the first five star hotel in the country and the tallest building in Thailand for many years. Its unique spire made it iconic.

From then on, she extended the hotel brand to resort areas like Phuket, Hua Hin and Pattaya. Then to other countries such as the Maldives, Philippines, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Cairo and Nairobi. We now operate twenty-nine properties in eight countries around the world. We will gradually begin to open the sixty plus hotels in seventeen more countries in the next three to five years.

We have quite a few brands under our portfolio, Dusit Thani brand which is the luxury Thai elegance design hotel. We also have the DusitD2 brand, which is more contemporary but with Thai design and caters more to the younger generation, which is a growing segment. So I am fulfilling our founder’s dream, to show Thai hospitality to the world.

What makes Thai hospitality so special and unique?

Hospitality is in the DNA of the people of Thailand. In our culture we are brought up to take care of others and this is inherited in all Thai people. My job is to ensure that all six thousand employees understand and commit to this on a daily basis. When we are in different countries, we also need to adapt to the local requirements. So, in Dubai you can still feel the Thai hospitality but you will also feel a touch of local culture.

Our vision is very simple; we said we are proud of our Thai heritage, delivering gracious hospitality to the world.

When I first joined as group CEO, I worked with my leadership teams and ground staff to define the Dusit DNA. We came up with three-core values, care, commit and can-do. These core values explain everything; we are in the hospitality business so our job is to care for others.

You need to think of others before you: not only guests but also to our peers in the organisation, our partners and suppliers.

The other core value is “can-do”, it is about having the right kind of attitude. For example if you say you want to upgrade because your room is dirty, the first answer is yes sir, we’ll figure out what we can do. That is the can-do attitude. Finally, commit, when you say something, deliver.

There are many luxury hotels in Thailand, what differentiates your brand?

I think the critical point here is the execution of your values. I make sure that all my employees do this naturally without my supervision. What I also think makes Dusit different is education. In 1993, our founder also started the first hospitality school in the country. Critical for us are talent and skills resources and to have good hospitality services we need to be able to develop this.

Now it has become a college for degree and non-degree programs. We have extended ourselves to partner with many world-class hospitality education providers. For example, for our hotel management program we partner with École hôtelière de Lausanne, which is the oldest hospitality school in the world. For the culinary school we partner with Le Cordon Bleu, Tsuji from Japan and Gambero Rosso from Italy.

We are going to have our own school in the Philippines, and will start our first academic year in August in 2018. If you want to provide good hospitality service you need to know everything from top to bottom.  We start training our students at the lower levels, and as they progress they gain more managerial responsibilities.

As the Group CEO what is your vision, what do you want to achieve?

My vision is intertwined with the company mission: I would like to bring Thai hospitality to the world.