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A New Niche
The debut in southern Thailand of its first Reserve property marks a bold reinvention of the Ritz-Carlton brand.
If you don’t read the fine print, you might never guess that you are at a Ritz-Carlton resort when you check into Phulay Bay. The gilding and gracious formality that characterize older Ritz-Carlton properties around the world is notably absent, and you won’t find soft cream slippers and a matching bathrobe in the closet. Even the company’s famous blue lion-and-crown logo has been removed from the stationery. The only sign of the hotel group’s involvement is barely legible: the words “A Ritz-Carlton Reserve,” printed almost as a footnote below the cursive Phulay Bay logo.
For a company that’s invested so much into name-brand recognition since its inception in 1983, this seems a radical departure from tradition. But that’s just the point. “We want people to walk in here and think, ‘Wow! This is nothing like a Ritz-Carlton,’ ” says Estelita Sebeto, general manager of the 54-room Phulay Bay in Krabi, which opened in December as the hotel group’s first property in Thailand and the first in the world to bear the new Reserve brand. “We really wanted to move away from the mass hotel and resort concept and focus on something that’s small, personal, and unique,” she says.
The idea is to attract sophisticated, independent-minded travelers to intimate and highly individual properties in remote locations, where they’ll be pampered with every luxury imaginable. “A refuge from the expected,” is how Ritz-Carlton president Simon Cooper described the Reserve brand when he announced it a couple of years back. The resorts will be unintrusive, ecologically friendly properties of less than 100 rooms, designed to evoke a strong local personality and identity. “We do not work to one design mold,” Cooper said, “but allow the creative process to be destination focused.” Which means that no two Reserves will ever be alike. “When you check in, it will be an absolute surprise,” Sebeto says.
Each property will also have a signature name to reflect the locale. Phulay, a portmanteau combining phukag (Thai for “mountain”) and thalay (“sea”), aptly describes the resort’s picturesque setting on the Krabi mainland, where craggy limestone hills march down to the shores of the Andaman Sea.
Finally, Reserve properties will be far removed from the Ritz-Carlton brand. “We don’t want to talk about Ritz-Carlton at all,” Sebeto says. “This is a brand extension—to add exclusivity to the company name. If you don’t reinvent yourself, you’re not competitive anymore.”
This notion of “reinvention” is by no means new: Starwood did it with the introduction of its funky W hotels, as did Hyatt with their boutique Andaz properties. Similarly, the goal here is to attract a new set of guests, people who are looking for something beyond the typical Ritz-Carlton experience. “We wanted to capture a totally different market,” Sebeto tells me. “We wanted to capture the rich and famous.” Perhaps the burning question, then, is why it took the group so long to get here. According to Ritz-Carlton’s global chief operating officer, Herve Humler, “This was not something we wanted to rush. It’s very expensive to create a Reserve property. It had to be exact.”
THE REVIEWS OF THE ERSTWHILE
Phulay Beach Hotel on TripAdvisor would make any hotelier cringe: former guests complained about everything from the service to the facilities, and many reported checking out early, so unpleasant was their stay. Originally opened in 2001, the eight-villa property closed its doors in 2004, having struggled to entice visitors despite its lush location. But the owners, local investment company Piya International, saw potential in the site, as did renowned Thai architect Lek Bunnag, whom Piya commissioned to overhaul the resort in 2005.
Five years and some US$100 million later, the property reopened in late December under Ritz-Carlton management. “It only took us six months to sign the contract,” Sebeto tells me over a pungent green-papaya salad in Sri Trang, one of the Reserve’s six restaurants and bars. “It normally takes two or more years for these things to happen. But both parties were just so excited about the project, it was a done deal from the beginning. Krabi offered the ideal landscape, and the architecture was perfect.”
From our perch, I can just make out the small, empty beach that fronts the resort. It’s not the most captivating stretch of sand that I’ve seen, but the offshore eye candy—azure waters studded by the karst islands of Phang-nga Bay—offers ample compensation.
“When Lek came here,” Sebeto continues, “he said, ‘This place is so beautiful. All I can do is re-create everything beautiful that I have ever made. I will put the best of my work here.’ ” Behind some of the region’s most acclaimed resort projects—Lanna Spa at the Four Seasons in Chiang Mai; Kirana Spa in Bali; The Barai in Hua Hin—Bunnag’s vision to bring together highlights from his curriculum vitae at Phulay Bay is apparent from the moment you check in.
The entrance area, Tarn Court, clearly takes its cues from the Arabic designs Bunnag employed at The Barai. Upon arrival, guests are ushered into an open-air courtyard where towering plum-hued walls cut with Moorish-style windows encircle a cluster of tall palms. When I visit, my companion comments that it feels like we’ve fallen down the rabbit hole with Alice, so strangely wonderful are the colors and dimensions.
Tarn Court is not the only place where scale is exaggerated. Enormous teak doors tell larger-than-life folk tales through Lanna murals painted by artists from northern Thailand. The two-by-four-meter bed in my Reserve Villa is by far the largest I’ve ever slept on; it must take a team of housekeepers to change the sheets. And the bathroom’s frangipani-shaped terrazzo tub could easily fit four people. But just in case I want to invite more guests over for a splash, I also have an outdoor bathtub and a huge egg-shaped infinity pool.
While the big beds and amount of space dedicated to bathing are common across all villas, that’s where the similarities end. Each compound was built around the existing landscape, which means that gardens vary in size, shape, and layout. Some villas come with rooftop patios and sand gardens, while others have stilted pools reaching into a jungle of bamboo—a well-manicured jungle, mind you.
“Phulay is as much about the landscaping as it is about the buildings,” Sebeto says as we wander past a fishpond fed by a natural mountain spring. “We wanted them to complement each other, like yin and yang.” So while Bunnag’s architecture is dramatic and severe, the gardens are much more subtle: betel-nut shrubs interspersed with bamboo, frangipani trees, bougainvillea, and jasmine. Sebeto describes the overall effect as “making the jungle look sophisticated.” This bounty is not lost behind walls either—my room doesn’t really even have walls, just lots of glass. There are also two huge skylights above the bed and bath. One night I see a shooting star while taking a soak.
“WHEN WE DESIGNED PHULAY,
we wanted quality. We didn’t want to penny-pinch,” Sebeto tells me on my second day at the resort. The first female general manager for Ritz-Carlton International, Sebeto spent two years opening the property, hand-picking everything from guest slippers—raw silk in royal purple—and dinner plates to the 300 staff who work here. Normally, the ratio of staff to customers is six to one, she tells me. In other Ritz-Carlton resorts, it’s more like two to one. Needless to say, a stay at Phulay is very personal. I’m addressed by name by every staff member I encounter, and my butler somehow manages to remember how many cups of coffee I’ve had, what I ordered for dinner last night, and that I like my sparkling water with a slice of lime. And every time I leave my villa she’s waiting in a golf buggy, ready to zip me off to lunch or spa appointments.
“We’re very proud of what we have now,” Sebeto says. “But it was initially very hard to break corporate standards and tradition. When you’re creating a unique property, they really don’t apply. We had to write a new book.” Having a blank slate to play with has also meant overcoming a unique set of challenges. “Before Phulay, there was really no point of reference for owners and investors,” Sebeto says. “So, it’s definitely been difficult to sell the Reserve concept. It’s also going to be an intense year to try and position the brand to potential guests.”
Phulay Bay, which opened just 10 days before my early January visit, doesn’t seem to be having trouble attracting people, despite the steep rates. (My Reserve Villa, the second-most expensive room category, was priced at US$1,725 per night over the New Year period.) “I’m not afraid to say it’s not cheap here,” says Sebeto. “If you nickel and dime, you’ll go crazy.”
The people I meet—honeymooners from Russia, a family of five from London—seem to have no qualms about money; the Londoners have taken over the Reserve’s lavish Royal Beach Villa for five nights. One evening over cocktails, the dad jokes that he’ll fly his kids home in economy class if they don’t behave.
When they do eventually head home, the family will probably be facing a two-hour drive to Phuket’s international airport. Krabi province may have 15,000-odd hotel rooms, but its airport, 45 minutes by car from Phulay Bay, receives only two international flights a day, from Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. Given its location, not to mention its room rates, Sebeto admits she’s surprised her resort is already attracting so many families.
“We were initially targeting couples—this is a very romantic place. We don’t really consider ourselves a resort in the traditional sense, and that seems to have caused some confusion for guests already. There are no volume activities here.” Sebeto’s staff has had to adapt. There’s still no volleyball court or kids’ center, but children are entertained with batik painting, Thai dancing and language classes, and cooking demonstrations—activities that I wouldn’t mind signing up for myself. Three times a week, a baby elephant is brought up the beach to play with children as the sun sets.
“I FEEL SORRY FOR THE NEXT Ritz-Carlton hotel to open in Thailand,” says Sebeto, gazing out on a small craggy islet spotlit in front of where we sit at the Lae Lay Pavilion seafood restaurant. I can only agree that Phulay Bay will be a hard act to follow. Then again, the Ritz-Carlton’s next Thai property may turn out to be another Reserve—the 75-villa Similan Beach Reserve, slated to open in 2012 about 300 kilometers northwest of where Sebeto and I are sitting. Having two Reserves in southern Thailand when a worldwide cap of about 20—“to keep the brand exclusive”—has been suggested, strikes me as overkill. But as Humler points out, the development spectrum for Reserve properties is limited not only by location, but also by investors, given the expense and effort required to build them. “This is not a concept you can develop everywhere … these are places I visit and fall in love with,” he tells me.
In fact, the location Humler first fell in love with was a far-flung island in the Turks and Caicos. It was there that he planned to debut his first Reserve property, Molasses Reef. But six months prior to opening, the resort’s investors pulled out, forcing Humler to turn his attention to Thailand instead. But now that it’s up and running, Phulay Bay seems to have put regional development of the brand in fast-forward mode; Humler tells me that he’s already planning future Reserve properties in Muscat (set in an Arabian fort), Mauritius, and the Maldives.
“It’s exciting to think that none of these places will be the same,” Sebeto says, “that each resort will be given total freedom to write and define themselves. It’s a whole new world for us.”
111 Moo 3 T. Nongthalay, A. Muang, Krabi; 66-7/562-8111; phulaybay.com; doubles from US$575.
Story by Natasha Dragun Photographs by Christopher Wise
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