 by Raini Hamdi, HOTEL Asia Pacific
IN the second of a two part series we take a look at some of the people who have, and are continuing to point the way forward for the industry. KP Ho is one of those people.
For 10 years he has pioneered niche travel and tourism products and services for the legendary Banyan Tree which he founded. We asked him about what it took to achieve success and where the opportunities lie in the future.
"The traditional area we went into, beach tourism, is a bit saturated. Even the pool-villa concept, which we pioneered - now everybody's got that. This is inevitable. Within five years of a product launch, you see other people doing it. So we've also asked ourselves, where can we go? And I think one of the niches that one can go into would be areas that are still relatively new. Broadly, people categorise some of that under soft adventure, culture tourism and eco-tourism. Even as travel categories, they are new: soft adventure is new; spa tourism is very new and growing very rapidly; culture tourism is very new; eco-tourism is not that new but in terms of international players getting into it, rather than your small little players with shacks on the beach, that's relatively new."
"These areas also, by their nature, do not lend themselves to big players. You can't imagine a culture tourism product in say, Lhasa, or in some little rainforest in Costa Rica, being a Grand Hyatt with 600 rooms. By definition, it wouldn't be this kind of product. Pokhara is a good representative. Pokhara has culture, soft adventure and eco-tourism, and we will have a spa there."
"I was chatting with somebody the other day about every business having a product lifecycle. We're relatively fortunate that, in tourism and hotels, the product lifecycle might be seven to eight years before the product becomes crowded. We've seen this with spas. We actually pioneered the tropical spa resort five or six years ago, and it's already getting crowded. After 10 years, it will be very crowded, and we know that we have to move on."
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