Like Warren Buffet, Taiwanese investor Jimmy Dai believed that if everyone was going one way, he would go the other. And so 10 years ago, when he thought of building a hotel in Taipei, he went against the trend and built the city’s first design boutique hotel.
“At that time, the hotel industry in Taiwan was into four and five star hotels,” said George Dai, the son who’s now working with the Taipei Inn Group, founded by his father. “My father always believed in thinking differently – when the trend goes this way, do the opposite, he says.”
And so he developed Ambience and made it an all-white hotel. Said George, who studied in Australia and returned seven years ago to Taiwan, “This was a no-no in Taiwan. In Chinese culture, white is not considered auspicious. We chose white because white is clean.”
Its difference made a statement and it got rave reviews from the media, both local and international. “A lot of fashion brands liked working with us,” said George. The hotel became the address for product launches and lifestyle events. In the lobby is a gallery displaying works by Taiwanese artists, a positioning that has come to be identified with the Taipei Inn Group.
The gallery displaying local artists in the lobby of Ambience
“We do invest a lot in new artists, we want to bring out the creative young side of Taiwan and give young artists a chance and a platform to show off their works in our hotels.”
Encouraged by the success of Ambience, the senior Dai, sensing a market opportunity in the growing middle class, decided to get into the budget segment and built the first City Inn seven years ago.
That was about the time when George, who was then working as a personal trainer in the Gold Coast after finishing university, decided to return to Taipei. He continued as a personal trainer in Taipei for a while.
“My dad didn’t want me to join the company, his thinking was, you never want to see your son fail in the same company. I wanted to prove to him that I could do it and so I got a job in another hotel, working in front desk for six months.
“It was when he decided to start the City Inn brand that he thought he could find some use for me.”
Today, the Taipei Inn Group has five City Inns and is about to open the sixth in Taichung. “Dad is not so heavily involved now, we have a CEO Thomas Ho and I handle the marketing, construction and development. I play a personal role in the design of the hotel.”
Obviously inspired by his father’s philosophy – to be different – George’s idea for City Inn was to have the rooms designed by different artists. Each City Inn is thus different. “I like to do different things, try different styles.”
The group also has the Dandy Hotel brand – three in Taipei – and Hotel 73. Each hotel carries a different design, all have attitude. Dandy for example uses a lot of wood and natural colours.
Its hotels have managed to attract a good share of international guests, comprising up to 70% of guest mix for City Inn. And all run healthy occupancies and pretty healthy average rates of up to NT3,300 at the Ambience.
George acknowledges it is harder to scale the group due to the individual design of each hotel but he wants to stay true to its vision. “Everytime we add a new hotel, I ask the question, how can I improve the quality? How can I use new stuff? We want to keep our differentiation.”
Among TripAdvisor’s top 10 hotels in Taipei, at the time of the interview, seven of Taipei Inn Group’s hotels were in that list. “The nost simple and powerful marketing strategy is word of mouth. We have not spent one cent on advertising. For people to realise how special your hotel is, you have to make your hotel special.”
Over 50% of bookings come through its own website, 30% from OTAs and the rest from other channels.
George Dai: “We want to be the traveller’s friend.”
Its target customer is the individual traveller who look for different experiences in hotels. “The question we ask ourselves is, how can we serve our travellers better. We really care what customers think of us,” said George. “We have double the crew of a normal budget hotel and we want our staff to be like the traveller’s friends – to give them ideas on where to go and where to eat.
“We want to inspire travellers’ passion in Taiwanese culture as well.”
For that, it offers above market salaries to attract a higher caliber of talent. “We are lucky that we have managed to find a lot of passionate young people who love what they do. They also work very hard.”
Asked if he was one of the luckier ones having a father already in the business, he said, “I don’t think I am luckier. There is more pressure on me to succeed. We try not to take too much about the work outside the office, sometimes we do have disagreements.
“But he’s taught me many things – the most important is to be honest and be creative.”
The group has expansion in its sights, eyeing Singapore and Japan. It signed a partnership agreement with Agora Hospitalities, a similar hotel group in Japan.
It knows however that competition is hotting up. “A lot of people are jumping into hotels in Taiwan. There’s two or three hotels opening a week in Taipei. Seven years ago, people invested in luxury. Now everyone wants to get into the budget segment,” said George.
“The important thing for us is to stay focused, be different and keep up the quality of our hotel experiences.”
