Property Care Services (Thailand) Ltd (PCS) plans to use flexible pricing, adjust its business model and offer new services to achieve a growth target of 9% in 2009 during the property market slowdown, says director Arnaud Bialecki.

He said the tourism industry continued to struggle since the closure of Bangkok's airports in late November by anti-government protesters. At that time, hotels faced extremely low occupancy of less than 10%, and while the situation has improved somewhat, the occupancy rate in some hotels is still low.

Therefore, PCS has designed a new pay-per-occupancy pricing method, allowing its hotel customers to pay expenses in line with their real revenue.

"If occupancy drops, [property maintenance] charges should not be at the same rate. It does not make sense during an economic downturn," he said.

Hotels using the service would be able to save cost by 20-30% when compared to the cost of hiring permanent staff.

The new pricing strategy would base charges on room size and number of nights occupied. This would help PCS not only maintain existing customers that need to cut costs but also expand to attract new clients that need to outsource non-core business.

However, outsourcing in-room cleaning is still not popular among Thai hotels as some are worried about the image of their properties. They outsource cleaning only for common areas.

PCS anticipates growth in in-room cleaning outsourcing as hotel owners would save costs of permanent wages at a time of volatile occupancy rates. The money could be used for retirement compensation and for increases in permanent employees' salaries.

"We already use flexible pricing for office building customers and expanded to hospitals in September last year," said Mr Bialecki. "Airlines are another potential customer group while schools also are suited to flexible pricing as they are open only 180 days a year."

Last year PCS generated 3.4 billion baht in revenue, rising by 10% from 3.1 billion in 2007. Currently, it has a total of 5,000 customers in Thailand. The majority are office building owners, at 48% of the total portfolio, followed by industrial (20%), retail (16%), hospitality (7%), residential units (6%) and educational institutions (3%).

PCS also has adjusted its business model by dividing its business geographically into zones instead of types of services. This approach would help it expand new services to existing customers and increase revenue from current ones, Mr Bialecki said.

After setting up a 50:50 joint-venture firm, Foodhouse Catering Services Co Ltd, with the listed restaurant operator S&P Syndicate, in September last year, the company plans to expand catering to hospitals with a revenue target of 100 million baht in 2009.

Currently, it has four hospitals as customers and it plans to open canteens at office buildings this year.

source : www.bangkokpost.com