SiteMinder Asia - Case Study
Thailand was an obvious choice for online hotel booking technology company SiteMinder.
From the Asialink Business Thailand Country Starter Pack
With more than 8,000 hotels and a position at the heart of Southeast Asia, Thailand was an obvious choice for online hotel booking technology company SiteMinder to establish their primary Asian support office. But the Australian-headquartered business had its work cut out to persuade the bricks and mortar owners of Thailand's hotel sector to invest in its online offerings.
As its core business, SiteMinder essentially acts as a switch between hotels and online travel agents like Agoda, booking.com and Expedia. It uses channel manager software to help hotels maximise their online room distribution and acquire more bookings. Globally, SiteMinder has more than 18,000 hotels as customers.
"Often the owners of hotels in Thailand are quite successful," explains Glenn Andrews, SiteMinder's Asia managing director. "To get them to understand why they should change their already profitable way of doing business and look towards online methods, requires education and some persistence. They're often very traditional, having lots of personal connections and business coming through travel agents who have a physical presence throughout Thailand."
"The Thai hotel owners say 'it almost costs less to get someone to do this manually, so why should I invest in your solution?'. We had to invest in a lot of training for our sales staff to explain that broadening existing distribution will increase revenue.
The Thai hotel owners say "it almost costs less to get someone to do this manually, so why should I invest in your solution?"
"Another challenge was that we are still providing client support out of our Australian office for all of Asia through our bilingual support team members. However, quite often Thai hotels have the opinion that local office support will be better because they will understand Thai service expectations more," explains Andrews. "We are now in a position to move that way but had to first grow the business to a certain level to support the decentralisation."
Originating from founder Mike Ford's search for a better online booking system for his Manly backpacker hostel in 2006, SiteMinder now has offices in Sydney, London, Dallas, Cape Town and Bangkok. Andrews set up the Thai office in 2012, and has built the Asia regional customer base to span across Thailand, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan. The company hopes to double the size of its Thai-based team over the next 12 months. But when it comes to attracting dynamic Thai staff, SiteMinder's online platform is all positive.
"Our Thai staff love working with what they call a 'sexy' business because it's all online," highlights Andrews. "We have a culture of excellence which they really run with, they love motivation. In Thailand, you can get people who are hard working but fun loving at the same time."
SiteMinder sweetens the deal too. "We're seen to be a foreign-owned business without too much of a brand in a very unique industry so we made the decision to pay good base salaries. These are slightly above the average to win confidence, which led to word-of-mouth referrals – all which help to get more good staff," says Andrews.
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