With the support of the Board of Investment of Thailand and the Tourism Authority of Thailand, The Beaches will be the new shining symbol of the country and will be the benchmark of destination resorts in Asia.

It has also joined with True Corporation, one of Thailand’s largest technology companies, to create Thailand’s first wireless lifestyle convergent communities which will feature state-of-the-art technology throughout the entire project.

The masterplan architect and designers behind the success of The Beaches Resort & Residences are award winning world class design firms – Carl Ettensperger of C&C Studio and Terry Henriksen of Henriksen Design Ltd, who have worked on 5-star hotel projects such as Mandarin Oriental, Hyatt Hotels, Ritz Carlton, Siam Paragon Bangkok, Huvafen Fushi Maldives (2008 Worlds Best Beach Resort, Harpers Bazaar Travel), Hard Rock Hotel – Universal Studios, Florida, and many more prestigious resorts.

Set over 88 rai of landscaped gardens, man-made beaches, and water lagoons, The Beaches private community will have four grand 5-star hotels, stunning water villas and Private Residences. The Beaches Resort has the best of everything – International Waterpark and Surf Park, The Beaches Longevity & Wellness Spa, state-of-the-art fitness club, a Grande Promenade with an international village with over 20 restaurants and retail, tennis academy and a Watersport centre. It is also centrally located in the heart of Thailand in Bang Saray Bay, a tropical oasis – 10 minutes from Pattaya and only 90 minutes from Bangkok

Chairman and CEO of Pacific Shore Developments, Liakat Sultan Dhanji, has been responsible for making the brand a success. According to him, Thailand needs something distinctive if it is going to stand out against the stiff competition developing in the region.

V9 Design & Build, were invited to build the resort’s website and, from initial discussions with Mr Dhanji, ideas were centred on creating an architecture that would concentrate on eMarketing by employing Web 2.0 technologies.

Living in Bangkok, you see glitzy front-page supplements that dominate Thailand’s English dailies, full-page magazine and newspaper colour ads that abound large project launches, and the billboards that predominate the city and Skytrain. You can only imagine the cost of such publicity and its significant impact on a project’s bottom line.

That is not to say that elegantly-produced brochures and local media advertising doesn’t have merit, but it has always seemed that it is a sort of marketing overkill — a gunshot rather than rifle approach to project exposure.

Professional blogging: it increases company revenue over time through the marketing and relationship building power. The ability to write effective, interesting, and informative blog posts has proved itself be a highly cost effective option.

It is even more effective when added as a seamless addition to a resort’s website for several reasons. First, Google and the other major search engines like content and change which adds value to a site’s PageRank™; it extends keyword range; it is disseminated to the world’s largest blog directories; and it is accompanied by RSS. Article writing and press releases can be submitted to the world’s largest websites, especially two that are associated with Google and Yahoo.

Over the last few years, search engines have made it increasingly difficult to reach a targeted audience. Gone are the days of mailers, link exchanges and non-industry-related links. Even with ezines, there’s no guarantee you will be read. A great alternative to this is RSS (Really Simple Syndication). It is not a well-known method for companies to publish and distribute content in this format (e.g. publicity releases, news, newsletters and articles). Syndication means you don’t have to visit each site individually to see what’s new — you simply scan headline summaries in a reader and click to read the full text.

Most real estate projects use Flash technology that presents brilliantly-animated images but fail with their eMarketing efforts because of it. Search engines cannot see beyond the front page. There are two large property developers in Thailand, both of which have projects that have only their home pages listed. Both are poor examples of internet marketing and are therefore spending fortunes on print advertising. In contrast, The Beaches will bypass outdated marketing methods by creating a wealth of exposure, both in Thailand and internationally.

The Beaches, to our knowledge, will be the first large-scale real estate development project in Asia to employ Web 2.0 as its online publicity vehicle.

Is Thailand a good place to have a holiday home?

Yes, apart from the fact that foreigners aren’t allowed to own land, which means that the only real viable option is to purchase on a long term lease. The longest lease allowable in Thailand is 30 years. Of course, it is possible to write an option into the lease giving the lessee the option to renew for a further 60 years. For most, 60 years is long enough. However, there is the risk that the lessee cannot renew the lease after 30 years, because they have snuffed it, or the lessor has snuffed it, or some other reason like the government decides not restrict the lease term to foreigners to, say, 10 years.

Thailand has a huge potential for growth in the retirement and holiday home industry. Massive. But of course, with xenophobia or just plain arrogance running so deep in the veins of the rich and powerful in Thailand, they don’t want to accept the fact that Thailand might be a better place with foreign influence.

Let’s not get carried away, most Thais would welcome a new law allowing foreigners to purchase land. It wouldn’t have to be the whole of Thailand after all, there could be zoning laws brought in the help boost development in certain areas and allow foreigners to purchase land in those specific areas only. Most Thais would see that there would be a new flow of money brought into their local economy, and that they would prosper from it. What is the government afraid of anyway by not allowing foreigners to purchase land. They can still control the use of the land, by restricting use to residential purposes only. Or simply allow foreigners with a retirement visa in Thailand or over a specific age to buy their dream house. Are they really afraid that a foreigner will own a house in Thailand??

What’s more, this increased development and cash flow into the local economy will result in new shops, restaurants and therefore jobs for the local Thais. The value of the land will increase in these ‘zoned areas’ which will also increase the value of the Thai owned land (all though let’s face it, if the government brought in a zoning law like this then the leading politicians would have bought up all the land themselves just prior!!).

One of my staff in Thailand comes from Rayong, and her aunt has a very old unused run down house in Rayong on a 1 rai piece of land. The house is about 500m from the beach, very near to Poi Pet the port going to Kho Samed Island. Overlooking green hills and fields, she only wants 2,000,000 Baht for the house and land. This is very affordable to a lot of people (some other houses for sale can be found at www.property-bangkok.com).

And why don’t banks lend to foreigners to buy property. Surely they can seize the property if the mortgage is not being paid. They have collateral already. Why, please can someone tell me why, can a Thai national with no money, no job, and no salary, get a mortgage in their name if they have a foreigner acting as guarantor, but the foreigner him/herself cannot get a mortgage??