TODAY

The Strand Hotel managed by GCPH – Gaw Capital Partner Hospitality, is renown as  one of Myanmar’ s colonial landmarks, was re-launching at the end of December 2016 with luxury services and two renovated restaurants and   a bar. TODAY met Mr. Olivier Trinquand, Vice President of The Strand Hotel, and talked about current operations and future plan.

Open…  

Soft launched on the first of November, 2016. The soft opening event will be early next year (2017) and intended to invite local people; Myanmar or expatriates, Governments

The objective of the current renovations…

The Strand Hotel is the icon not only of Myanmar but also of Southeast Asia. It’s an image, a history, it has many souvenirs and carries a lot of memory for people. The Plan of the Strand is the same as before, continue to operate, I would say a little different, with a total focus on luxury.  We have renovated all equipment such as bed sheet, toiletries and amenities etc. with luxury brands. The service we are giving is also a luxury service. The bed sheets are made of Scottish linen and the bath towels are made of the Egyptian cotton. So basically, we are trying to select the best for all items we use. And in the rooms, we selected many handicrafts and decorations that are from Myanmar.  The most important part is the staff, which is Myanmar; they are really making this hotel.  We plan to have swimming pool, fitness and spa in the future also.  Our Butler service remain a strong point in the hotel and as the years past less and less hotel enjoy this service

     The objective of the Strand Hotel is to be known as “the” hotel of Myanmar and as well as in the Asia.

Training of staffs…

During the 6 months closing period we took the opportunity to do a lot of training sessions, this in all areas of service as much as technical and administration.

     The Strands has 32 rooms, the same as before. And we have a total of 142 staffs, including 5 expatriates. We will have one expatriate for the launch of the restaurants, he will stay here for 3 months and making sure that everybody is well trained. We’ll have the local restaurant manager but to come to the right level, we need to train that person with expatriate who have experience working in very famous restaurants abroad like in UK, and in French etc.

About restaurants…

We’ll have two restaurants to start with. The Strand Café for lunch, dinner and the renowned Strand High Tea. The Strand Restaurant which was used to be called the Strand Grill, is a fine dining restaurant and open Wednesday to Saturday from 7PM, and the Sarkies Bar. The Strand Café include in its menu a very large selection of Myanmar food, our Myanmar Chef has been with us for over 23 years and is very famous for the quality of the food she is preparing.

     The Strand Restaurant offers French and Mediterranean Fine cuisine. Our Executive Chef Christian Martena is Italian, very famous in Asia and is supervising the team.

Rates of the rooms…

After renovation the rates will increase but stay in the range of what we expect to be charged in this category of hotel. 2012-2014, the market has been booming, in the following years many new hotel rooms have opened.  We always had the reputation of being a beautiful hotel but accusing some technical deficiencies. Other than these, brand new hotels are coming and this is affecting any markets. We have not always been able to keep our rate high due to competition, 2016 election year which has the same effect in any country.

     We do not target leisure group but more individuals, our clients are from every countries and age varies from 35 to 85.

Promotions and special offer…

Our promotions are on added value more than discounted rates, this for the room prices

(http://www.hotelthestrand.com/promotions.php)

Same for our Food and Beverage outlets we will be more onto offering additional benefits more than lowering the prices.

     Overall we aim at having a top quality service that do not match with discount but more into the pleasure of enjoying an experience.

(http://www.hotelthestrand.com/promotions.php)