How The Standard Ends up Managing What was to be the World’s First Orient Express Hotel in Bangkok
No, it’s not an Orient Express cabin. This entry level room at The Standard Bangkok Mahanakorn is 40sqm in size. Right, Standard International’s executive chairman Amar Lalvani: The biggest challenge was moving from something that was traditional luxury to something more vibrant and dynamic.
By Raini Hamdi, 20 April 2022
Perhaps it’s meant to be that a hotel inside an unusual 78-story glassy skyscraper with protruding balconies and terraces ends up being managed by a chain that prides itself as unconventional.
But before The Standard, it was Accor’s Orient Express and, before that, Marriott’s Edition. How the 155-room Standard Bangkok Mahanakorn will look and feel after changing management twice within four years will soon be unveiled.
Standard International is targeting a May opening, although Hotels-Asia was able to book a stay only from June 1 onwards on its website. The pre-opening rate is $205 (6,877 baht) including service charge and tax, for a night’s stay in an entry level Standard King room (40 sqm) with breakfast.
From Marriott to Accor
On hindsight, an Orient Express hotel debuting in Bangkok would have been somewhat of a stretch for a brand so rooted in Europe. Accor’s chairman and CEO Sebastien Bazin in fact envisioned that Orient Express hotels would “start in places of the original Orient Express journey between western and central Europe,” he told this editor in an interview in 2018. Accor bought 50 percent of Orient Express from SNCF in 2017, with the aim of launching a new collection of Orient Express hotels. The state-owned rail group retains ownership of seven Orient Express train cars that have connected European cities for a century.
But the opportunity to introduce the first Orient Express in Bangkok, Asia’s most popular city, came when troubled Mahanakorn developer, Pace Development, sold a chunk of the building to King Power in 2018. Accor has a strong relationship with the duty-free retailer, which owns the 366-room Pullman Bangkok King Power Hotel.
For King Power, the boast of owning the world’s first Orient Express hotel must have been equally irresistible. Hence Marriott, which was originally appointed the hotel operator, lost the deal. The chain had even installed a general manager, Christiano Rinaldi (now CEO of Capella Hotel Group), to open The Edition Bangkok.
From Accor to Standard
The journey from Orient Express to The Standard, on the other hand, had to do with the pressure to “get it right” for the first hotel under a heritage European brand. This apparently heated up when the owning company brought in two locally based designers to work alongside Accor-appointed Tristan Auer of Wilson Associates, according to a source close to the development.
“Three different designers trying to work together resulted in many different interpretations,” said the source. “There was also confusion on what an Orient Express hotel is. And when Covid came, there’s a question of costs [to redo mock-ups], even doubts whether there is a market for Orient Express as people’s budgets became tighter,” the source alleged.
Accor declined to go into the reasons but said both parties had mutually agreed to discontinue their partnership on the project.
So in came The Standard, a ‘celebrity’ brand founded by American entrepreneur and hotelier André Balazs in 1999 but is relatively unknown in Asia. However, King Power knows Sansiri, the Thai real estate developer that started acquiring Standard International in 2017 and is now its major shareholder. The two Thai conglomerates powered up; thus began another new journey for the hotel.
No Baggage
Free of sentimental or emotional baggage that reimagining an Orient Express is likely to bring, Standard International is ushering in an Asian flagship hotel that will “reflect the unmistakable energy of the Thai capital and infuse the brand’s anything-but-standard ethos throughout the property,” it says.
Expect “vibrant colors, fluid shapes, evolving art installations and lush greenery that flows seamlessly inside and out.”
Executive chairman Amar Lalvani told Hotels-Asia that Standard did a complete redesign, although it accommodated much of the structural aspects and layouts.
“For all intents and purposes, this is a comprehensive Standard design through and through, done by our fantastic in-house design team in collaboration with Spanish artist and designer Jaime Hayon. We totally reimagined the hotel to create an immersive environment unlike anything in the city, or anywhere for that matter.”
He didn’t mind working around existing structural aspects and layouts.
“We actually thrive in being creative within constraints. All projects have them in some way and this was no different. In fact the foundation of The Standard brand was in adaptive reuse.
“The first and third Standard hotels in [Hollywood and Miami] were retirement apartment buildings and the second [in downtown Los Angeles] was an office building. It wasn’t until we built The Standard High Line [New York] that we built one from scratch. Our London hotel was an old town council building and our new project in Lisbon was an old Navy hospital!” said Lalvani.
Instead, the biggest challenge was “moving the flow, programming and materiality from something that was traditional luxury to something more vibrant and dynamic.”
“But we did it and I can’t thank King Power enough for their willingness to work with us to create something that is truly anything but standard,” he said.
Lifestyle vs Opulence
The hotel promises a vibrant outdoor pool scene The Standard is known for, the “most advanced” gym in Bangkok offering local memberships, and an array of F&B offerings including The Standard Grill and Mott 32.
Still, the whisper in Bangkok’s hotel circle is that there is only one back-of-the-house to service restaurants and other facilities in the building. If so, moving this flow may be a key challenge as F&B is an integral part of the brand’s DNA.
In Asia, Standard opened a resort in Hua Hin in December last year and will open a hotel in Singapore and Melbourne in 2023.
Meanwhile, the first Orient Express in the world will now debut in Rome by Christmas 2023 after a full renovation of the Hotel de la Minerva. The historical building was originally built in 1620 and has been operating as the Hotel de la Minerva since 1832.
“Orient Express will bring the legendary spirit of Europe’s golden age of travel back to the heart of Rome, enabling travelers to enjoy a modern yet historic stopover inspired by the opulent services of the original train,” says a statement announcing the news.
Back to its roots – fittingly.
