According to the Minister, Somsak Pureesrisak, the project will help save operational costs for hotel owners nationwide. It will offer an alternative to various popular global online booking websites such as Agoda, Expedia and Phuket-based HotelTravel.com.
The plan coincides with a revived attempt by the Thai Hotels Association (THA) to convince the Ministry to crack down on illegal hotels in order to head off over-capacity and cut-throat pricing.
THA president Surapong Techaruvichit said that online hotel booking services made it easy for a non-registered hotel to pick up business. They could compete with registered hotels without having to comply with the law or pay the cost of registration.
“The association will ask the Ministry to collect accurate statistics across the country… so we can see the extent of the competition from non-registered hotels.”
He claimed there was unfair competition mainly from apartments and condominiums that placed some of their units on the market for daily rental through internet booking sites.
“It causes an oversupply of room and forces hotels to dump rates to stay competitive, but there could be security issues if the properties are not complying with safety regulations,” he said.
According to hotel statistics by the close of 2012, there were 7,069 hotels and 350,000 rooms nationwide, which is lower than the count by the National Statistical Office (NSO) for 2011; it reported there were 9,865 hotels and 450,000 rooms across the country, he said.
“The latter figure reflects several accommodation types that are avoiding registration, but act as commercial hotel ventures.”
The Ministry of Interior’s statistics show there are 353 hotels in Bangkok, while the NSO Thailand puts the figure at 681. However, on the online hotel booking website Agoda, almost twice that number of hotels – 1,232 – are listed in Bangkok, he noted.
“Room occupancy for association members has grown only 10 per cent this year, while tourist arrivals grew 20 per cent, partly because bookings went to unregistered hotels.”
He believes if the ministry would crack down on illegal hotels, the room rate would increase by about 15 per cent in Bangkok alone.
The Ministry, believing the market is controlled by foreign hotel booking services, is promoting the concept of a central hotel reservations website.
Agoda appears to be the main target of criticism and its success is what has spurred officials to consider setting up in competition.
The project is under study and might not materialise if the set-up costs prove too high, but it is indicative of a national policy to put the tourism industry firmly in the hands of Thais at all levels including the highly lucrative third party hotel booking sites mainly owned by global companies.
“Instead of paying up to 15 per cent of a room rate to international websites like Agoda.com, local hotels may pay about 5 per cent to the government’s sponsored website and the earnings would be used to promote the website as well as the tourism industry.”
In fact, the commissions quoted are far below what popular sites earn when all the promotional fees and added value features are included. The cost of a booking rises to around 35 per cent – higher than what even the global distributions systems (GDSs, such as Amadeus, Travelport and Abacus) charge.
That is the nature of the game, which started as a cheap channel that undercut traditional GDSs. But as popularity grew, so did the fees and pricing options to ensure a property appeared high on the screen’s Page 1 list.
The Ministry of Information and Communications Technology will play a supporting role along with the National Electronics and Computer Technology Centre (Nectec) to create the proposed central reservations platform and website. It would be managed by the Tourism Authority of Thailand.
Some optimistic supporters say it could be launched later this year, though this seems unlikely given that the project is still in the study and budgeting stage.