Panviman Changes its Website Again

I guess there is a lot of pressure to deliver when you are in charge of a 5 star hotel in Thailand. I suspect Panviman changes its key management team as frequently as Chelsea Football Club. Each new manager seems compelled to commission a new website. The last one for Panviman needed dealing with as it was hacked, and remained hacked for a number of months.

The latest website for Panviman Resort and Spa in Thong Nai Pan is a thing to behold. It is no doubt expensively put together. The opening page uses a series of full screen video clips sewn together to show what the hotel is like. It is very similar to the opening page of PayPal.

The images start with the corner of the beach that Panviman claims, then the speedboat transfer, then the less glamorous minibus transfer, then various clips of hotel rooms, restaurants, spa and fitness room. The site is successful in drawing the viewer in to the 'world of Panviman on Thong Nai Pan'. Pictures speak louder than words; and videos speak louder than pictures. In a sense Panviman has a jump on Rasananda, Buri Rasa and Santhiya in this respect.

The only downside is that the website needs a decent broadband connection (but less so than old Flash sites) and the impact is diminished by viewing the site on a smart phone (which more and more people are doing because they love their phone).

The biggest criticism is that there is a spelling mistake on every page - namely 'Guest's reviews'. The apostrophe needs to be after the 's' since they are referring to more than one guest. In the review section they use booking.com, Agoda and Review Pro. Trip Advisor is noticeable by its absence, as is the fact that the reviews are handpicked and hand coded: the reviews are not in a dynamic feed. The hotel clearly is vetting comments. The hotel also is reluctant to post links to Trip Advisor where people can book on another site.

This leads on to another point - booking.com are notorious gits when it comes to their 'price parity' clause in their agreement. It has been challenged in European courts and is an on-going blot on the reputation of the hotel booking site. They insist hotels cannot offer cheaper rates on their own website.

And yet the Panviman website offers 10% discounts on 'best available rate' for those contacting the hotel directly. It looks like flouting the rules. Booking.com won't take them to court in Thailand but can sabotage Panviman in other ways. We will see.

Other noticeable changes is that the Cool Sands Pub doesn't feature at all on the new website. This surely spells the end for the expensive restaurant on the beach with buffets and live entertainment. It looks like Cool Sands is a flop - the party scene died in Thong Nai Pan Noi and the attempts to instigate a bourgeois, sedate version of the said scene has fallen on its face.

The Path

When tourists first visited Koh Phangan in the 1970s there was no road to Thong Nai Pan. The last part of the journey from Thongsala had to be done on foot or by boat. Footpaths were important travel routes. One route that has sadly disappeared in Thong Nai Pan is the path over the rocky headland that divides the northern Thong Nai Pan Noi from its larger southern sister, Thong Nai Pan Yai. It is a path that saves a lot of time. The alternative is to take the main road up the hill and down the other side. The present journey on foot between the two beaches takes about 30 minutes.

Panviman has occupied the Noi side of the peninsula for over 15 years and has had an impact on the accessibility of the peninsula. They have also recently secured a spot on yai beach at the bottom of the rocks. Previously they have built walk ways partly around the peninsula for guests to access villas and take in the scenery.

There used to be a very faint track that if you slipped quietly along let you take the short cut from one beach to the other. This path is now mostly used by Panviman staff. The development of this great spot straddling the two beaches seems to have closed the rock-route between the beaches.

On the rocks around Panviman there used to be a colony of giant lizards that you could spot sunning themselves most days. There numbers have dwindled.

The future surely for Panviman is to make the hotel one that offers its guests easy access to not one, but two fantastic beaches. It is a unique selling point.