I wanted to create a new landmark in my hometown. I believed that my house had great potential to attract tourists because it is located in an important economic area of Chiang Mai and near popular destinations. Furthermore, I wanted to provide foreign tourists with a warm welcome to Thailand. These ideas led me to develop the Nidhra Lanna Hotel. Because it is a small hotel with only 10 rooms, customers feel that they are living with a Thai family when they come to my hotel. The building design uses Lanna’s contemporary interior concept to preserve and inherit Lanna’s art and culture.
What do you find most rewarding about being a business owner?
It provides me with the independence to think and explore my ideas. It also gives me more responsibility. I have responsibilities to my business, my stakeholders, and myself. When I make decisions, it affects the people I work with as well as myself. Because I have many people to consider when making decisions, I have to think carefully and consider numerous perspectives before making a final choice. This has helped me mature.
How did Boost with Facebook help your business?
The Boost with Facebook project opened up a new world of marketing to me. I learned how to use tools to engage the right target groups. As a result, my hotel is attracting more guests, while using less time, money and human resources to do so.
How did Boost with Facebook help you overcome your challenges?
In the past, we focused our marketing efforts on OTAs (Online Travel Agents), such as Booking.com, Agoda, and Expedia. But these platforms are very competitive because customers can see many different hotels at the same time. Moreover, it is difficult to reach and target customers directly. On OTAs, you wait and hope that customers find you.
How does Facebook help small businesses?
Most small businesses have limited marketing budgets, and so it is hard to compete against larger businesses. Facebook and online marketing meet the needs of small businesses and help even the playing field. Facebook tools and advertising are not expensive, yet the platform provides sophisticated tools to analyze customer behavior. Through Facebook, we are able to reach customers efficiently with a small budget and use the data to make informed plans for our business.
How does Facebook help you reach new customers, inside and outside of Thailand?
Facebook has no borders so we can expand our customer groups and analyze our target customers anywhere in the world through AI. As such, we don’t waste our money on marketing to the wrong customer groups and we can even choose the country and area we want to target. Other online platforms cannot do this as well as Facebook does.
Paweennawat Supanusorn
Hometown: Chiang Mai, Thailand
Age: 31
Business: Nidhra Lanna Hotel
Facebook Business Page: NidhraLanna
