Review of Siam Bayshore Resort and Spa, Pattaya, Thailand

Sleazy, Rundown Pattaya Resort in a Touristy Setting 

Note: This review (based on a my recent bad experience at this resort) was originally meant for TripAdvisor.com but was never approved. They wanted me to edit it, make it acceptable, subtly hinting that I remove all or most of the negative remarks if I wanted to publish my review on TripAdvisor. I didn't want to do that so here it appears now. I'll write about this TripAdvisor bias soon in a separate post!

The Siam Bayshore Resort and Spa is supposedly a posh 4 star /5 star rated Beach resort that's currently ranked #13 of around 300 odd hotels across Pattaya, Thailand. Its at the other end of the Walking Street (a Pattaya landmark) near the Mixx club (i.e if you are entering from Pattaya Beach). This is the only distinct advantage (for which even I booked) this poorly managed, run down resort seems to have. For the price you shell out here, I would recommend staying at one of the better hotels on the Beach Road which are definitely better and cheaper - an expensive insight I gained after 2 nights I stayed here.. 

Well, the key ailment the Siam Bayshore suffers from is their awful and brash staffs who man the reception, the restaurant, the pool….pretty much everywhere across the hotel. They are unnecessarily rude, apathetic and treat hotel guests as free loaders. So, take the other glowing reviews you read on TripAdvisor.com with not a pinch but loads of salt. Not believable at all considering I was at the same hotel treated by the same staff !! 

Anyway, apart from their ill-mannered and lethargic employees, some more bad pointers 

- The check in was a slow, ‘no smiles’ dismal affair. No welcome drink or cold towel that was promised and with a truly uninterested reception giving you that “ oh, here they come, one more check in” irritated look. 

- The lobby is small with a dated 80s look. Not the best of Thai architecture if you know what I mean. Nothing classy!

- The Rooms and their Balconies are in urgent need of renovation. Old furniture, faded worn out carpets, okay beds, erratic AC and a strong musty room odor and crawling insects all around. The water pressure in the shower (a must for me) was a miserable dribble that was never fixed in spite of bringing it to the hotel’s attention. 

- The entire hotel just has one single small lift that will take not more than 4 adults. I stayed at the topmost 4th floor and it was a perennial wait every time!! 

- They have 2 pools - one inside the hotel and one outside the hotel across the road facing the sea. The one inside is fairly big with a slide for children but the slide area stinks as it’s near the hotel sewer. 

- This pool is not manned by any lifeguard or staff ! I saw a near drowning of a kid who had waded deep into the pool and was rescued by a fellow guest so people with children need to beware of the hidden dangers!! 

- The pool outside on the road is used for their daily barbecue seafood buffet dinners. You don’t get access to this pool in the evenings unless you buy the dinner. It doesn't cut ice even if you are a resident guest at the hotel. Btw, don’t fall for the tempting buffet poster, I tried it – cold, limited selections with very little seafood, cheap deserts and most of all, expensive. 

- The morning buffet breakfasts were a mad rush with so-so service. Almost the exact small spread for both the days and I also found 2 of the dinner dishes too (from the previous night) repackaged in a new avatar for the morning selection. 

- The hotel concierge is a rip off. I ended up paying 3 times (more than the usual fare) for a taxi trip outing and I actually ended up at the wrong place.

- The Spa is a false suffix to the hotel name, the pricing is way over the top, and Spa staff – indolent and poorly experienced. You’ll get better quality and lesser prices just outside the hotel. 

- Night Security is lax at the gates and entry. As a late nighter, I found the inside hotel entry unmanned on both the nights and outside gates with guards who really don’t care who was entering or exiting the hotel. 

So, all in all, maybe this hotel works for desperate first timers who only visit Pattaya for all the wrong reasons and who are probably too intoxicated with all that Pattaya (and Walking Street especially can offer) but for frequent travelers and those visiting Pattaya for a nice holiday, the Siam Bayshore resort can be a complete spoilsport. I am not coming here ever again.

Digital Playgrounds of the New World

Child's Play and Advertising

Quick! What do you remember about Saturday or Sunday mornings when you were a kid? Chances are, if you grew up in the 70s or later, Saturday and Sunday morning meant cartoons. And while a weekend sunup might have meant cartoons for you, it meant direct-hit, targeted marketing for toy and cereal companies. Bernard Loomis is known as the man who invented Saturday morning because, as CEO of Mattel, the manufacturer of Hot Wheels, he launched the Hot Wheels television show. This flawless blurring of TV show and commercial was a revolution of positively epic magnitude in marketing terms. Imagine getting a consumer's exclusive attention for 30 straight minutes today! Very good luck.

But a few weeks ago on a rainy Saturday morning, I noticed a fascinating experience at my former senior colleague’s home. His three kids (all under 7 years) and their two equally young cousins were huddled around one of the many computers at his home. The living room was completely vacant and the television was switched off. Lazily sipping a fine Nescafe blend, I asked them why they weren't watching cartoons like good little kids.

The collective force of annoyed looks was scornful. "We're playing games with other kids online." Pointing excitedly to the ever-changing screen, my friend’s daughter said, "See, if you want to chat, you type your message here. Look, I'm talking to a kid in Austria while we play." "Whoa," I thought, "After these messages, we won't be right back!"

I was intrigued. Multi-user web gaming isn’t breaking news to me, but it dawned on me that yet another precept of marketing had been rendered dead in the water by the Internet. Man, I just love that!

I sat down in the empty living room with my favorite cup of hot coffee and stared out the window, past the darkened television to the distant wet sky, and wondered just what, exactly; Bernard Loomis would do in this situation.

Marketing is shifting swiftly these days, and technology-driven opportunities are numberless. Just look at the frantic promotions that those sprawling mega-malls are employing to keep people off-line. Or checkout Airtel’s new Facebook promo, the telecom leader in India has a new promotion with Facebook that offers consumers free access to the Facebook’s mobile site in vernacular languages on their phone, a first of its kind in the world. Seems like kind of a stretch to me.

Everywhere you look, big brands are in trouble. Kelloggs, McDonalds and Ford are all examples of big brands having difficulties adapting to the new consumer-driven web economy. Back in 1969 when Bernard Loomis came up with his brainstorm, the brand was the central focus. The thinking was that if you create a popular brand, customers would flock to you. But now, consumers are more concerned with the future of their brands than the history of the brand. Yikes. This turns traditional packaged goods marketing upside down.

Then again, every fit of disorder and change presents new opportunities for those who are willing to apply some energy to their interpretations. We know that kids have moved from in front of the TV to in front of the computer, from passive viewing to active real-time interactions. There's an exchange going on, and the challenge for marketers is figuring out how to meaningfully join in and capitalize.

For Bernard Loomis, that meant creating a TV show based on his product. For today’s marketer, it might mean creating something completely new that delivers exactly what tech savvy kids are asking for these days. Poke around the Cartoon Network website and you'll see what the little kids are doing today.

So if you're a marketer experiencing that nauseated deer-in-the-headlights feeling brought on by out of control change, I encourage you to remember that chaos breeds opportunity. And if you think about it the correct way, you just might find that opportunity waiting to be knocked online (and also offline).

Distilling Your Brand’s True Brew

This post is a continuation to my earlier post on Simplicity in Marketing.

Creating a Simple but Effective Blueprint
Distilling the real essence of your message is an intense process that requires quality input, an understanding of goals, analysis and tough decisions. It involves regimented facilitation, real-world testing and expert packaging. There is no magic off the-shelf blueprint that allows you to make the intricacy transparent. However, brand specialists and expert knwoledge can assist with the refinement process – providing the steering tools and structures to aid and accelerate it. Beyond packaging the ideas for ease of consumption, these objectives can enable your company to swiftly convert a business model’s strategic objectives into actionable and profitable milestones that drive momentum, orchestrate positioning exercises and test acceptance.

Most executives want their company’s marketing and advertising messages to be “stylish, sophisticated or professional ” and if possible, “clever.” too. This pasteurized checklist is at the heart of what is leading many competitors toward a fruitless state of uniformity. They’re all saying the same things and trying to lead the customer to the same conclusion.

Eager to demonstrate their “proof-of-authenticity,” many of these same executives are afraid to leave any spec for scrutiny or proof point out of their sales proposition. The extensive detail is perceived as validation. This “everything-but-the-kitchen-sink” approach is an easy way out. And, its net effect is usually the exact contrary of what was intended. This plain vanilla granularity just causes more puzzlement that doesn’t help in any sales conversion or market expansion. Besides, there is brand degeneration resulting from decentralized company silos – corporate divisions and operating units which propagate self-styled messages, positions and identities, often ill-timed, hastily designed and poorly executed.

Think Smart and Work Hard
Product Differentiation and Service Demarcation is often the result of simply noticing what your competitors have overlooked and providing that instead of everything else. Think of the Apple iPhone or Gmail. A lack of sacrifice represents unripe positioning.

If your message designs are based on what really interests people, and how they can talk to each other and make easy comparisons, you will find that you can say a lot less. Strive to find and use the language and questions that real people use.

The Truth is Out There
Let your hair down for a second: When you visualize the triumph of your business, is it based on the way things ought to be or the way things really are? The act of arranging information for simplicity then becomes an act of brand and market insight.

Amidst a flood of new age propaganda and mega-efficient delivery mechanisms, human communication is still very much grounded in some enduring truths, and the maxim that those who do not learn from history are destined to repeat it is indeed one of them.

While technology is changing exponentially, the hearts of the people using it are inflexible to transform. Most of what’s being sold today as new insight is merely the rediscovery of knowledge we’ve had for centuries but perhaps not acknowledged. The trick is to admit it and leverage it to your advantage. Candor is a guiding principle and Authenticity provides understanding that transcends spin and packaging. As experience counts, you could also learn from the marketing gray hairs who’ve been through a business cycle or two.

Give What the Audience Wants
To see sales patterns and develop a marketing message that incites a desired result, start with age-old human nature, not cold corporate logic. Hence, the content of your brand message must communicate genuinely in the language of the intended audience. For a brand or image to break through the information overlaod and market sauration, it must be based on what the target audience perceives as indispensable and relevant to them. What they want to know and need. Not what you feel is imperative or exciting to them.

Technology can help and create exhilarating opportunities but it can also overwhelm us with choices. Codifying, collecting and making everything accessible in nanoseconds is less important than describing how it’s used – the application context. Instead of speeds and feeds or the rate of data, concentrate on describing your brand’s spirit and how it relates to your audience, reflecting on the people connection and your brand’s heart.

If you wish to harness technology efficiently, improvise all the time and focus on the things that happen behind the patented breakthroughs. Recognize that the real goal for the technology is for it to be as transparent and useful as possible.

Content is still the King (and the Queen too)
Content is and has always been the language of customers. And as mentioned earlier, remember to always communicate from the intended listener’s point of view, not your company’s. Start your brand messaging where employees and customers meet, work backward from their needs. By the way, cracking the code on your customers’ needs and priorities can’t be accomplished “inside”. The key lies outside your business and perhaps outside your industry.

If all else fails, revert to the inevitable and basic questions of your customer: How is your product useful to them? What value does it provide? What’s truly in it for them?

In this sense, your content should be much more than words, pictures and voices. It should evoke emotion – a deeper connect. It should be simple, insightful and compelling. And, it is perhaps Content - the one thing one can't teach a computer to generate, so there is a uniquely human dependency. Respect that. After all, the content you develop is what will help you bond with your customers and if driven right, help you achieve world-class results.

Attack of the 6 Foot Banana Woman

With the last minute mad rush, Christmas is obviously a bad time for shopping, even groceries. I was at a supermarket yesterday, the hypermarket to be exact, when out of the blue, this 6 foot tall, frizzy-haired Amazon of a woman comes flying past me, trolley very obviously out of control, almost breaking the sound barrier and slicing off my toes in the process.

After ricocheting off the fresh fruit and vegetables section, I tried to get my bearings. The heel had broken off my new Nike sandals, and my basket was now empty and lying upside-down at the other end of the aisle. I watched as a lonely tub of tofu disappeared under the aisle division. The blood rushed to my head.

Grasping the weighing machine for support, I spotted her, submerged to the elbows in purple cauliflowers. She had a baby on her hip which was screaming its head off, its sticky fingers entangled in her over-dyed mop of blond hair.

Now as any self respecting woman knows, there's a bad perm and there's a BAD PERM. This woman definitely sported the latter, with pride. I strode purposely towards her, breathing deeply.

"Excuse me!" I said emphatically. She spun around. The baby promptly dropped its sucker into the mop. She didn't seem to notice.

"Can you not see I'm busy?" she yelled at me, juggling onions at the same time as throwing random bunches of bananas into her trolley.

She barely paused for breath before letting loose a storm of verbal abuse. Shocked, I backed off slightly. She continued to rant, frantically waving an oversized banana in my face. The sucker stick was now barely visible. I hadn't even said anything yet. This woman was clearly not well or I'd just interrupted a breakdown in progress. I backed off some more. The baby started to cry. A crowd was gathering in the aisle.

"Security, please report to Aisle Three" came blaring out over the loudspeaker. I looked up. Aisle Two flashed menacingly above my head. Banana woman was getting closer.

I started to panic and began my retreat. I backed into the Bakery section in my haste to get away. She was still coming. I heard the crowd murmur. I couldn't move. My fingers closed around a packet of doughnuts. I was just about to hurl it at her when the baby threw up. She was momentarily distracted.

Taking the gap in a desperate "you can still save yourself" attempt, I heard a smash emanating from behind the tins of baked beans. Turning, I caught a quick glimpse of a very blonde head, before it vanished amongst the display. Oh God, not another one. "Mummy!" yelled the blond head as it catapulted into the trolley. The onlookers scattered. Mummy was frantically trying to wipe the vomit off her bright red Levis T-shirt when security rocked up.

Trying to look inconspicuous, which wasn't easy with a shoe in one hand and a packet of jammy doughnuts in the other, I negotiated my escape. I smiled sweetly at the security guard, shrugged my shoulders and made "she's gone nuts" gestures with my hand as I passed.

Turning briefly I saw the banana woman sitting in a crumpled heap on the floor, holding a packet of frozen peas to her head, a concerned store manager patting her shoulder.

Isn't it amazing how a harmless act of grocery shopping can suddenly turn into a bizarre health hazard? Why does this happen, and what have we been reduced to as a race?

Mall rage definitely exists. It’s a fact. It manifests in many shapes and forms, and has different causes and effects for everyone. Today’s lifestyle commands a much faster pace than 20 years ago. From dual-income families to singletons living the high-flying career life, most of us teeter dangerously on the edge from too many multivitamins and artificially high levels of gym-induced serotonin.

In this “must try harder” society, harassed executives and junior yuppies will inevitably hit the aisles after work, or during their lunch hour. Well, mid day shopping is purely an exercise in frustration. From screaming around your office, running to and from engagements and meeting deadlines, it is virtually impossible to downshift to the pace required to follow a slow-moving family up an escalator, or bored housewives having a gossip session right in the entrance to the supermarket. So we’re in a bad mood before we even begin.

Saturday mornings or any day in the first week of the month, especially after payday, should be avoided at all costs. The parking is impossible, hoards of over-excited kids on sugar highs race around annoying the general public, while disillusioned mothers try unsuccessfully to control them. And what’s with those tiny trolleys for kids anyway?

Ditto with sale areas, and festival bargains. Fighting for the last “sale” under the harsh glare of the fluorescent lighting is enough to turn any normally sane person into a raving lunatic. Everyone knows fluorescent lighting increases stress levels, as does depleting stocks, narrow over-crowded aisles and ‘elevator’ music from the 1980s. Is that supposed to soothe us? So, karmically-speaking, we’re a real mess.

Then there are the queues. Why is it that after standing for 20 shoe-tapping minutes the person in front of you hauls out their credit card to pay for two trolley loads of groceries? Of course it doesn’t work.

Now the check-out assistants are check-out assistants for a reason, and they can’t possibly know why the credit card isn’t working. So we have to call visa or mastercard to get clearance (if its amex, its even worse). The clearance finally comes through after ten mind-numbing minutes, by which time you’ve polished off a tube of Rollo and half the queue has moved to aisle three.

Only the die-hards are left, waiting out the storm. And it’s still not that simple. Now the store manager – who happens to be on a smoke break – has to be called to provide authorization for this recently cleared, over-extended credit card. He finally strolls up to the till, and authorizes. Thank God.

By this stage, the collective beeping of 45 check-out machines has sent your mind into overdrive, and your blood sugar has leapt from dangerously low (pre-Mentos) to uncontrollably high (post Mentos) and unless you get out of this bloody shop in under five minutes you’re going to have to be institutionalized for life.

So, we ask ourselves, what is the solution? Kid-free time slots would be a good first option. These coinciding with prime shopping time for those of us with jobs and no free time.

Clear the aisles and let the efficient, the organized, the working people have free reign!

Make sure you have a list. You know what you want. You go in, you get it and you leave. This minimizes the "vacant-shopper" syndrome and reduces chaos.

Know your supermarket. You can weave expertly through the aisles, not having to double back because you’ve forgotten the tofu in aisle two.

And the golden rule: never shop when you’re hungry! Hyperglycemia is a very common, often misunderstood condition. Low blood sugar contributes to mood swings, bursts of outrage, dizziness and in extreme conditions can induce coma. When coupled with a chaotic environment and hoards of people, the inevitable outcome is “mall rage”.

Finally, if you know you’re a victim, you have a short temper, or you’re just a bad shopper, then get with the 21st century and shop online!

What more could you want? As a friend of mine once said, “Oh, I don’t shop, darling. I have PEOPLE to do that for me…” With wishes for a happy and peaceful shopping!