Settha Palace Hotel in Vientiane, Laos

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(13/02/24)
 Certain hotels command respect. Whether it is
because the owners have lovingly restored them, breathing new life
into a building with a storied, possibly even romantic or tragic
past, or whether the buildings themselves contain a certain amount
of magic, the walls, tall ceilings, windows and furnishings all
sharing their own secret tales, glimpses into the past. Or,
perhaps, it is all of the above that comes together to make a
truly unique experience for guests fortunate enough to spend one
or more nights there.

South east Asia is home to a number of
such hotels. Think Raffles Hotel in Singapore; The Strand in
Yangon, Myanmar; Le Royal in Phnom Penh, Cambodia; and the Eastern & Oriental in
Penang, Malaysia, to name but a few.

Lobby of the Settha Palace Hotel in Vientiane, Laos

Built by the French in the 1930s, the Settha
Palace Hotel in Vientiane, Laos is another hotel that oozes French
colonial charm and has been painstakingly restored to its former
glory, reopening in 1999 to welcome heads of state, captains of
industry and travellers from around the world.

To learn more about the hotel, its past as well as
its future, Steven Howard sat down with Hala Krimi, the hotel’s
General Manager, during the ASEAN Tourism Forum 2024 in January.

In this interview, filmed at the exhibition on 25
January, Steven asks what makes the Settha Palace so special,
which markets the hotel attracts and how it manages to compete
with the growing number of new hotels in the city.

We also discuss how the hotel manages to attract
and retain the right quality of staff, whether the hotel has
recovered from the complications brought on by the global pandemic,
and what plans the hotel has moving forward.

All that and much more in the HD video and audio
podcast of the interview below.

Settha Palace Hotel in Vientiane, Laos – Interview with Hala Krimi, General Manager

PODCAST

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