It’s All About Context
Thu 24 Aug 2006
Yesterday I had the distinct pleasure to listen to a talk by Bill Heinecke reflecting on his long years of doing business in Thailand. You may not know Bill’s name, but if you’ve visited Thailand, you’ve most likely either stayed in one of his hotels or eaten in one of his restaurant. Heinecke is the founder of the Minor Group, one of Thailand’s largest companies and the largest hospitality group in Asia. Minor Group’s hotel interests include the Bangkok and Pattaya Marriotts, the JW Marriott in Phuket, all of the Four Seasons hotels in Thailand as well as their own Anantara resorts. Restaurants include the Pizza Company, Swensens, Sizzler, Dairy Queen and many more. They also distribute consumer products such as Esprit and Red Earth.
It’s always nice to hear Bill talk about his experiences. Although he is very active in the communities where he does business, he rarely puts himself in the spotlight. So, as he is perhaps Thailand’s most successful entrepreneur, I always take advantage of any opportunity to hear him talk. There are a couple of stories I thought worth jotting down here:
In what I thought was perhaps one of his most heartwarming stories, he recounted the deep depression he went through during the 1997 economic crisis. Like most people, he lost millions when the Thai Baht lost half it’s value. He was literally bankrupt, and he recalled how, one weekend at his Four Seasons Resort in Chiang Mai, his wife asked him why he was so depressed.
Bill tried to explain to his wife the complex economics of exchange rates, and how almost everything they had worked for was now gone. His wife still didn’t understand why he was depressed, so he told her, “Honey, we’re as broke as we were 30 years ago when we got married.”
To which his wife replied, “Well, that may be true, but 30 years ago we weren’t spending our weekends at the Four Seasons.”
See? It’s all about context.
The other story speaks a bit to the divide between east and west. In Heinecke’s early days, he once headed up the local office of Oglivy & Mather, which is still one of the world’s premiere advertising companies. At the time, in the 1970s, Ogilvy still ran the company himself and Bill had the job of organizing the boss’s first trip to Thailand to see his operation. Apparently, Ogilvy didn’t like to fly, or rather, he didn’t like turbulence so he avoided flying unless it was by Concorde. Accordingly, he planned to fly the supersonic jet to Australia, make his way to Singapore by boat and then travel up to Bangkok by train. This was long before the Eastern Oriental Express came to Asia, so Heinecke had to try and explain his VIP guest’s requirements to the State Railways of Thailand.
After a long explanation to the good gentlemen at Hualompong Station (which Bill says hasn’t changed at all in 30 years) regarding his boss’s requirements for which cabin was acceptable and even which scotch whiskey had to be available on the train, the ticket agents had only one question: “If this guy is so important, why is he coming by train?”
