Hard Rock to open in Pattaya

THAILAND - Hard Rock Hotels & Resorts will open its second hotel - in Pattaya, Thailand - on September 1 next year.

The Hard Rock Hotel Pattaya will rise from the site of the Merlin Pattaya which has been shut down.

The 360-room Merlin will reopen under the Hard Rock signature with 320 rooms, said vice president-sales and marketing, Stephen Michie.

"The hotel will look and feel like the Bali hotel," he said.

Hard Rock Bali was the group's first hotel under the Hard Rock Hotel franchise which Singapore-based businessman Ong Beng Seng has the global rights to.

Original ambitious plans laid out for expansion were scuttled by the economic crisis and the group had to make do with one Hard Rock hotel until now.

While Pattaya may not be the ideal location, Michie believes there is room in the Thai resort for a Hard Rock hotel because "there is none of the upper end branded products like in Bali".

"There is the Royal Cliff, Dusit and the Marriott Royal Garden and that's it." He also compared Pattaya's three million arrivals to Bali's 1.2 million arrivals. "There is plenty of business to go round."

While Michie said that Pattaya had always catered to the downmarket tourists with its image of sleaze, he noted that a new Pattaya was emerging, one that was only 90 minutes by road from Bangkok.