The second of five children, Wallapa would accompany her parents while growing up in Thailand on holidays that inevitably centered around tours of family businesses, which then mainly comprised breweries and distilleries (Charoen’s Thai Beverage is the maker of popular Chang beer). Phuket will follow suit in 2023, once travel restrictions are fully lifted and reciprocal travel arrangements are in place with key markets such as China, Japan, Singapore and South Korea. In a May report, it anticipates Bangkok leading a rebound in the Thai hotel industry with a V-shaped recovery starting in the second half of 2022. “They are expanding, using their size strategically, and with all their capital.” “They are one of the behemoths in the industry,” says Nikhom Jensiriratanakorn, a Bangkok-based director of hotel consultancy Horwath HTL.
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Wallapa expects hospitality to remain a key growth driver and last October announced AWC’s plan to build four new properties, which will be operated by Marriott International, including a Ritz-Carlton Reserve and the first Autograph Collection hotel in Thailand.
“That is the strategy to prepare AWC for future growth.” Hotels generated 60% of the company’s revenue before the pandemic, and include seven properties in the Imperial Hotel Group that Charoen bought in 1994 as well as Marriott Marquis Queen’s Park, The Athenee Hotel and Okura Prestige in Bangkok. “We are looking at building an integrated lifestyle real estate group, and Thailand is our focus,” Wallapa, 47, says in a rare interview by video call from her Bangkok office. “We see huge potential growth and strength in Thai tourism.” About 30 billion baht will be spent to redevelop Bangkok’s historic Chinatown and riverfront areas as well as to make over Pattaya, a beach town of ill repute south of the Thai capital, as a destination for conferences and exhibitions. However, AWC’s most ambitious projects reflect Wallapa’s background in architecture and land planning. In February, she also acquired the 287-room Sigma Jomtien Pattaya Hotel for 550 million baht.
Yet those figures haven’t deterred Wallapa from planning four new hotels with 1,600 rooms, adding to AWC’s 17 hotels with nearly 5,000 rooms. Revenue slumped 54% in 2020 to 6.1 billion baht, pushing the company into the red, and fell a further 56% year-on-year in the first quarter, with a net loss of 594 million baht. Having sound financials helped AWC weather last year’s 83% plunge in tourist arrivals from an all-time high of about 40 million in 2019.
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