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   BUSINESS NEWS

HEADLINES [click on headline to view story]:
Fewer hotel rooms will be available in February

Hunsa.com aims to become No.1 website in Thailand

Metro System increases capital to expand services

Internet providers see early boom in job services

Software: Lotus sets 4 strategies to best Microsoft

Colgate uses entertainment to attract consumers at BOI Fair

Compaq affiliates with Mweb

Fewer hotel rooms will be available in February

Three major events - the BOI Fair 2000, the annual meeting of the United Nations Conference of Trade and Development, and the Chinese New Year festival have brought hundreds of thousands of visitors flying into the Kingdom, making this February one of the busiest months in recent memory. Chinese New Year alone was expected to bring in about 120,000 Chinese tourists to spend their lunar New Year holidays here.

“Nearly 500 special flights have been arranged by several airlines to help the flow of visitors to Thailand in February,” an airport administrator said. “There will be 50-60 extra flights from China, Hong Kong and Taiwan on February 5-6,” he said.

About 90% of the hotel rooms in Bangkok have been reserved between February 1 and February 19, while almost no rooms will be available in Pattaya during that time.

The number of Chinese tourists has increased a good deal this year compared to about 90,000 who visited Thailand during the lunar New Year in 1999. More than 3,000 rooms in Bangkok have been reserved for UNCTAD participants from February 12-19.

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Hunsa.com aims to become No.1 website in Thailand

Kriangsak Hiranvuttikul, well known among web surfers as “Mr. Hunsa”, the managing director of hunsa.com, announced plans to make hunsa.com the country’s no. 1 website by 2001. 40% of hunsa.com is owned by Shin Corp.

Hunsa.com is a well known Thai website based in Chiang Mai. Its great success is proven by the 40,000 hits/day it received last year, which has become 60,000 hits/day currently. There are 2 other websites in Thailand that have higher hit rates per day than hunsa.com.

Mr. Hunsa said that his development target for hunsa.com is to expand its customer base to business people, working ages and elderly people instead of focusing only on young people and students, like in the past. Education on e-commerce will be used to attract these new groups of members.

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Metro System increases capital to expand services

Metro System Corporation informed the SET of its plan for a 60% increase of its capital in Application Hosting Services Co., Ltd. - a service provider of Oracle application programs, valued at 1.8 million baht.

The additional investment is to add and expand computer services to customers. New services will enable customers to decrease expenses and at the same time the company can maintain its investment ratio, which will make a return to form of dividends and better customer services.

Metro System Corporation is a distributor of IBM computers, printers and office automations. At the end of 1999, Metro System had 1.774 billion baht in assets, 1.356 billion baht liability, and 415 million baht capital. Total revenue was 2.370 billion baht and total losses amounted to 28 million baht.

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Internet providers see early boom in job services

Internet providers and operators of employment web sites said they have received many more hits to their sites since late last year, even though more players had entered into this local market.

Jobs & Adverts, a job-on-the-net service, said a survey in October last year showed that employment web sites received 65,000-90,000 hits per day, 85% of which were employed Thais looking for new jobs.

Datchaneepron Panchalee, marketing manager of Jobs DB (Thailand) said their homepage has had at least 5,000 visitors a day since it opened in September 1999. More than 1,000 companies or businesses have subscribed to the service.

Loxley Information Service, which hosts ‘Job Loxinfo’ job service site, said it made 150,000 baht a month from advertising jobs and employment from 250 companies.

Job Loxinfo receives about 3,000 hits per day, and 90% of the people who apply for jobs on the net receive interviews. Fujitsu (Thailand) and Sony Thai said job advertising on the Internet was satisfactory, convenient and economical. Two other local job sites - ThaiEjob and JobSiam - have also enjoyed early success.

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Software: Lotus sets 4 strategies to best Microsoft

Lotus is showing its readiness to do business in 2000, and its next step into the ISP business, by announcing 4 strategies to take market shares away from Microsoft and increase revenue by 15%.

Karoon Techaburapanon, general manager of Lotus Development International Corporation, declared 4 strategies to achieve the position of software market leader ญ 1. Focus on messaging services; 2. Introduce E-business applications; 3. Penetrate into the training market using the web; and 4. Hit the knowledge management market or KM.

Instead of forcing users to totally change their system when using Lotus, this year Lotus will enable users to adjust and adopt Lotus applications to work compatibly with their current operating system.

Lotus’ other plans for 2000 include concentrating more on application services and expanding into ISP and telecommunications businesses.

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Colgate uses entertainment to attract consumers at BOI Fair

Colgate-Palmolive (Thailand) will be working with R. S. Promotions (1992) to have R. S.’s singers and artists join Colgate’s booth at the BOI Fair from 3-14 February.

“This cooperation with R.S. Promotion will be the first time we’ve used entertainment marketing in product promotion to attract consumers. Consumers have more stress in their daily life during an economic crisis and pay more attention to entertainment,” said Del Evin, marketing manager for Colgate-Palmolive.

Colgate-Palmolive will be spending more than 10 million baht in this campaign, excluding the expenses of entertainment on stage. The aim is to create product brand name recognition rather than to sell products during the fair.

Colgate plans to gain consumers’ confidence by showing its production technology. Premium products will be given away to visitors.

“Discount” is not a main strategy, since Colgate believes that visitors to their booth intend to buy products.

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Compaq affiliates with Mweb

GE Capital to hit Internet market

Chaiwat Shyangkoon, managing director of Compaq Computer (Thailand), said Compaq’s policy this year is to mainly concentrate on Internet business with an aim to support organizational uses of Internet and E-commerce.

Customers are classified into 3 sub groups: 1. PC for organizational uses, 2. Consumer group, 3. Solution and services group, which provides technical support in servers and networking.

As for a marketing plan, Compaq joined hands with Mweb Thailand, an Internet expert, and launched a special easy-and-ready-to-use e-commerce package which contains computer, server and homepage designing, as well as computer leasing services from GE Capital, at a 5,000 baht start-up price.

The promotional package will be the first launched during the BOI Fair and will focus on SME customers. “Projects at the BOI Fair will be our first cooperation with Mweb. This year we still have plans to run affiliated activities in many other projects,” Chaiwat said.

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Copyright 2000  Pattaya Mail Publishing Co.Ltd.
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Updated by Chinnaporn Sangwanlek, assisted by Boonsiri Suansuk.