She’ll always have Paris
After a sage piece of grandmotherly advice, flashy Naphaporn Bodiratnangkura eased out of the party scene and into serious hotel management.
Naphaporn Bodiratnangkura, aka Nu Lek, part of the fourth generation of Nai Lert Group, has been in the spotlight of
Thai society since returning from abroad many years ago and promptly being dubbed the Paris Hilton of Thailand.
She is shining once again with a passion to lead the group forward into new hotel and real estate projects.
Ms Naphaporn is managing director of
Sampatilert Co, one of several businesses under the 140-year-old group founded by her great-grandfather Lert Sreshthaputa, aka Nai Lert (Mr Lert), who introduced the
White Bus service in Bangkok.
Ms Naphaporn, 38, was sent to Britain with her older sister for study when they were young, giving her many new thoughts for when she returned home.
“I remember that I was just 12 years old,” she says. “My grandma sent me abroad because she realised that if I stayed in Thailand, I might not enjoy school and everyone would spoil me.”
Ms Naphaporn and her sister went to a boarding school called Queenwood, about a three-hour drive from London.
“Later I continued studying and graduated in hospitality management from the
University of Surrey in 2002,” she says. “By the way, I did not love study at all, but rather enjoyed several activities.”
After graduation, she moved to New York to study fashion design, but she confesses that her intention was just to travel and enjoy life instead of returning Thailand.
“One thing I still recall is that I was born in the same year when my family open a hotel, which was managed by Hilton International,” Ms Naphaporn says. “In those days, I never realised that I lived in a hotel, I just thought it was a big house where many people were living.”
While enjoying life in New York, Ms Naphaporn got a call from her mother asking her to return home, as the hotel was about to end the management contract with Hilton International.
Her mum had to decide whether to keep working with Hilton, seek a new partner or
explore other options.
“I then decided to come back to help my mother, leaving my dazzling life in New York,” she says.
The company inked a 15-year management contract with a new chain, Swissotel, but Ms Naphaporn was not much involved in operations at that point.
Instead, she kept going out to party in flashy and sexy dresses. The heavy socialising put her in the upper echelon of Thailand’s high society.
“Because I did not live in Thailand for so long, people had never seen me before,” she says. “But then I appeared in the spotlight, and with my extremely fun life and fashion, I was called the Paris Hilton of Thailand.”
With Ms Naphaporn’s hotel connections, the comparison came naturally, and she loved the nickname. But she was compelled to tone things down after receiving advice from her grandmother, Thanpuying Lursakdi Sampatisiri (the daughter of Nai Lert), who told her that “to be somebody is more difficult than to be nobody”.
Since that time, Ms Naphaporn has sought to remain a trendsetter while establishing her credentials as a young executive.
She grew up understanding how to run a hotel business. She also knows how to offer the best service to customers. Before starting her career, her grandmother sent her to Singapore to get intensive training in management at the Four Seasons.
In 2013, Ms Naphaporn began to work fulltime at the hotel, overseeing departments ranging from housekeeping and accounting to purchasing and services.
During the period, she kept travelling to see and experience the hotel business in different countries.
“Travelling and visiting other places can really help me get ideas,” she says. “For example, visiting a flower show overseas led to the adoption of a prolonged flower show at my hotel.”
While most operations are undertaken by the hotel chain operator, Ms Naphaporn has created concepts unique to the Nai Lert brand, such as turning Baan Nai Lert — the 140-year-old house on Wireless Road — into a museum.
Last year, Ms Naphaporn and her mother opened a French fine-dining restaurant, Ma Maison, and the Western-style Lady L restaurant, located in the same area as Baan Nai Lert.
“Customers coming to these restaurants and Baan Nai Lert are people associated with Nai Lert Group,” she says. “Their ages range from 20 to 80.”
In 2017, the family sold Swissotel Nai Lert Park Hotel to Bangkok Dusit Medical Services Plc (BDMS) for 10.08 billion baht. BDMS, owned by Prasert Prasarttong-Osoth, the founder of Bangkok Airways, is undergoing renovation and will soon reopen as a wellness clinic.
“In fact, we have thought about selling the hotel for years, because we wanted Nai Lert Group to become a huge real estate developer as in the past,” Ms Naphaporn says. “We used to own huge land plots along Wireless Road, which is now the most prime area in the capital.”
After selling the hotel, Nai Lert Group is making big moves; it plans to take the Phloenchit/Wireless area to another level.
“If we didn’t move [by selling the hotel] there would no movement in our group,” Ms Naphaporn says.
She says Nai Lert Group has finalised plans to invest in a hotel and residences in the remaining 20 rai on Wireless Road over the next 2-3 years.
The new project will be a tower consisting of 60 hotel rooms and 100 residential units. The project is expected to use 2 billion baht and should start construction by mid-year, to be completed in 2020.
The residential aspect will be a 30-year leasehold project. Average room rates for the hotel will place it in the luxury segment.
Additionally, the group is entering new businesses related to tourism, including an intensive training course for butler services.
“We have never said that we would stop running hotel and hospitality business,” Ms Naphaporn says. “Instead, we will be moving forward with even better developments.”
The group recently launched the Nai Lert Butler project, a 50:50 collaboration with the British Butler Institute.
Nai Lert Butler was created to teach hoteliers, business owners, hotel management and hospitality professionals about butlering to the British standard.
“We have to expand the business to cope with Thai tourism, which is expected to grow further in the future,” Ms Naphaporn says. “However, the country’s industry should not go with the mass market. Instead, it needs to improve products and services, especially high-level service standard. That’s why we need to bring butler service to Thailand.”
The first training course started last month, part of four courses a year. Future plans call for a two-day course for learners and the establishment of a butler school in Bangkok.
The group also hopes to launch an e-butler service to offer trained butlers for corporate and private events.
Apart from projects in Bangkok, a 40-pool villa is envisioned on the group’s own plot of land in Hua Hin. That project will cost about 1 billion baht.
Also in the blueprint are investments in hotel or other business in major tourist destinations such as Pattaya, Chiang Mai, Phuket, Khon Kaen and Koh Samui.
Ms Naphaporn is looking after 176 employees. She tries to manage the team with energy by showing them her own energy. She loves to wake up early in the morning and rush to work to talk to her people.
Apart from the hotel and real estate business, Ms Naphaporn owns and runs her own yoga business, Kri Yoga, which has five branches in Bangkok: Lang Suan, Srinakarin, Silom, Thong Lor and Rama IX.
She acquired the yoga chain from an Indian master eight years ago after becoming a regular customer.
Regarding her working philosophy, Ms Naphaporn says her motto is to do your best if you want to do something: “You only live once, so you better do it well. And if you do it well, you will enjoy doing it. It is from your passion and from your heart.”
In addition to yoga, in her free time she enjoys playing sports, water skiing, shooting, shopping and travelling.
For social events, Ms Naphaporn and her family are engaged in corporate social responsibility projects initiated by her ancestors, including flower shows and building libraries and rest areas at schools in remote provinces.
The group also celebrates Nai Lert Day each year on Dec 15, highlighting support organisations built by the group, including Lerdsin Hospital and Settabut Bampen School.
As for the overall industry, Ms Naphaporn says the hotel business should not compete on price. After a big investment in a hotel, cutting room rates by up to 50% hurts everyone. Instead, investors should build with good quality and charge a rate that says quality.
The Thai Hotels Association and other trade groups should impose hotel and room standards to avoid cheapening the sector, Ms Naphaporn says.
“If we offer tourists low prices, we will get low-quality tourists, so please do avoid this game,” she says.
You only live once, so you better do it well. And if you do it well, you will enjoy doing it. It is from your passion and from your heart. NAPHAPORN BODIRATNANGKURA MANAGING DIRECTOR SAMPATILERT CO LTD