Mandarin Oriental, Bangkok is a
five-star hotel
A hotel is an establishment that provides paid lodging on a short-term basis. Facilities provided inside a hotel room may range from a modest-quality mattress in a small room to large suites with bigger, higher-quality beds, a dresser, a ref ...
in
Bangkok
Bangkok, officially known in Thai language, Thai as Krung Thep Maha Nakhon and colloquially as Krung Thep, is the capital and most populous city of Thailand. The city occupies in the Chao Phraya River delta in central Thailand and has an estima ...
owned in part and managed by
Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group
Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group International Limited (MOHG) is a Hong Kong hotel investment and management group focusing on luxury hotels, resorts, and residences, with a total of 33 properties worldwide, 20 of which are fully or partially ow ...
. Located on the
Chao Phraya River
The Chao Phraya ( or ; th, แม่น้ำเจ้าพระยา, , or ) is the major river in Thailand, with its low alluvial plain forming the centre of the country. It flows through Bangkok and then into the Gulf of Thailand.
Et ...
, the original structure was the first hotel built in
Thailand
Thailand ( ), historically known as Siam () and officially the Kingdom of Thailand, is a country in Southeast Asia, located at the centre of the Indochinese Peninsula, spanning , with a population of almost 70 million. The country is bo ...
when it opened as The Oriental in 1876. Today, the hotel is one of two flagship properties of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group.
History
When
Siam
Thailand ( ), historically known as Siam () and officially the Kingdom of Thailand, is a country in Southeast Asia, located at the centre of the Mainland Southeast Asia, Indochinese Peninsula, spanning , with a population of almost 70 mi ...
opened to foreign trade after the signing of the
Bowring Treaty
The Bowring Treaty was a treaty signed between the British Empire and the Kingdom of Siam on 18 April 1855. The treaty had the primary effect of liberalizing foreign trade in Siam, and was signed by five Siamese plenipotentiaries (among them Won ...
, the sailors that manned the ships though
Bangkok
Bangkok, officially known in Thai language, Thai as Krung Thep Maha Nakhon and colloquially as Krung Thep, is the capital and most populous city of Thailand. The city occupies in the Chao Phraya River delta in central Thailand and has an estima ...
required accommodation on shore. To meet this demand, Captain Dyers, an American, and his partner J.E. Barnes, opened a hotel called the Oriental Hotel. This burnt down in 1865.
Several years later, a partnership of Danish captains opened a replacement hotel.
[Warren & Gocher. Page 120.] In the 1870s, the board of the Oriental Hotel decided the opening of the new River Wing in 1876 as the official establishment date of the Oriental Hotel.
H. N. Andersen
In 1881, 29-year-old
Hans Niels Andersen
Hans Niels Andersen (10 September 1852 – 30 December 1937) was a Danish shipping magnate, businessman, diplomat and founder of the East Asiatic Company.
Early life
Born into a working-class family in Nakskov, he trained as a shipbuilder befor ...
, a Danish businessman, bought the premises. His various business ventures led to him becoming a much-respected member of the Western community in Siam. Andersen identified a need for a respectable hotel with good accommodation, a bar, and a western menu to meet the needs of travelers and businessmen visiting Siam.
Encouraged by
Prince Prisdang Jumsai, Hans Niels Andersen formed a partnership with Peter Andersen and Frederick Kinch to build a luxury hotel. Designed by Cardu & Rossi, a team of local Italian architects, the Oriental was the first luxury hotel in Siam. The hotel opened on 19 May 1887 with 40 rooms and features which at the time had never been seen in Siam outside a royal palace: a second floor (during a time of single-storey bungalows), carpeted hallways, smoking and ladies' rooms, a billiards room and a bar capable of seating 50 patrons.
To ensure the success of the restaurant and a satisfactory level of service, the owners lured the chef and butler from the
French Consulate
The Consulate (french: Le Consulat) was the top-level Government of France from the fall of the Directory in the coup of 18 Brumaire on 10 November 1799 until the start of the Napoleonic Empire on 18 May 1804. By extension, the term ''The Con ...
away to work at the hotel.
The first major event that the hotel hosted was a grand banquet on 24 May 1888 to celebrate the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria. After personally inspecting the hotel’s facilities in December 1890, King Chulalongkorn decided the hotel was up to the standard necessary to host visiting royalty. The hotel's first royal guests were the entourage of Crown Prince Nicholas of Russia, (later Tsar Nicholas) in April 1891.
Marie Maire took over ownership of the hotel in 1910 and immediately set to work renovating it. She sold the property in 1932, but during WWII, it was leased by the Japanese Army and used as an officer's club (under management by the Imperial Hotel of Tokyo). Once WWI ended, Allied prisoners who thought the hotel still belonged to Japan occupied and vandalized it.
Germaine Krull
![Oriental Hotel Author's Wing (33113516105)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c6/Oriental_Hotel_Author%27s_Wing_%2833113516105%29.jpg)
At the end of the war, a six-person partnership each contributed US$250 to buy the hotel, badly run down from its wartime service. The partnership consisted of
Germaine Krull Germaine Luise Krull (20 November 1897 – 31 July 1985) was a photographer, political activist, and hotel owner.Sichel, Kim. ''Germaine Krull: Photographer of Modernity''. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1999. . Her nationality has been catego ...
(1897–1985), Prince Bhanu, General Chai Prateepasen,
Pote Sarasin
Pote Sarasin ( th, พจน์ สารสิน, , ; 25 March 1905 – 28 September 2000) was the 9th Prime Minister of Thailand from the influential Sarasin family. He served as foreign minister from 1949 to 1950 and then served as ambassad ...
(prominent businessman and lawyer) and John Webster and
Jim Thompson, two Americans who had served in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and who had stayed on in Thailand. Krull took the position of manager in 1947, despite no prior experience in the hotel field. Born in Germany, she had been best known as a photographer during the 1920s before service in the Pacific as a war correspondent for Agence France Presse. The hotel's restoration and restocking offered Thompson an opportunity to put to use his architectural and artistic abilities.
The hotel reopened for business on 12 June 1947. Krull turned out to be a natural hotelier and during her reign restored the hotel to its position as the premier hotel in Thailand.
Thompson soon left the partnership over a plan to build a new wing, though he stayed on in residence at the hotel for some time. To compete with popular clubs and a new local bar called Chez Eve, Krull established the Bamboo Bar, which soon became one of the leading bars in Bangkok.
In 1958 the ten-story Garden Wing was built. It featured the city’s first elevator and was home to the Le Normandie Restaurant.
In 1967, fearful that Thailand would fall to the communists, Krull sold her share to Italthai which at the time was well on its way to becoming one of the country’s most significant mercantile groups eventually totaling some 60 companies involved in almost all aspects of the Thai economy.
Italthai
Italthai had been founded in the mid-fifties by Giorgio Berlingieri, an Italian born in Genoa, and Dr Chaijudh Karnasuta, a Thai. Berlingieri felt that the Oriental had begun to rest on its laurels and had dropped behind its competitors. He wanted to develop the Oriental into one of the best hotels in the world. Too involved with his various businesses to devote time to the project, Berlingieri in November 1967 appointed 30-year-old Kurt Wachtveitl (1937– ), at that time manager of Nipa Lodge (a hotel that Italthai owned in Pattaya), as general manager of the Oriental.
In 1972 the hotel acquired an adjacent property upon which it erected the 350-room River Wing.
Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group and Mandarin Oriental, Bangkok
The Group began with the opening of its flagship property,
The Mandarin, in Hong Kong in 1963, which soon built up a reputation for luxurious service. In 1974, Mandarin International Hotels Limited was formed as a hotel management company. The Group's intention was to expand into Asia and operate hotels with a standard of service comparable to their property in Hong Kong.
In 1974 the company's hotel interests expanded further through the acquisition of a 49% interest in The Oriental, Bangkok. Through the management of both The Mandarin in Hong Kong and The Oriental, in Bangkok, the Group was in an unusual position of having two "flagship" hotels. In 1985, the Company rationalized its corporate structure by combining these two properties under a common name,
Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group
Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group International Limited (MOHG) is a Hong Kong hotel investment and management group focusing on luxury hotels, resorts, and residences, with a total of 33 properties worldwide, 20 of which are fully or partially ow ...
.
The hotel opened its renowned Oriental Spa in 1993 and finished a complete renovation of its rooms and suites in 2003. In 2006, The Oriental, Bangkok celebrated its 130th anniversary. In September 2008, the hotel formally changed its name from The Oriental, Bangkok to Mandarin Oriental, Bangkok.
Hotel
The hotel has contained 331 rooms, including 60 unique suites. The two-story Authors' Wing, the only remaining structure of the original 19th-century hotel, houses suites named after
Joseph Conrad
Joseph Conrad (born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, ; 3 December 1857 – 3 August 1924) was a Poles in the United Kingdom#19th century, Polish-British novelist and short story writer. He is regarded as one of the greatest writers in t ...
,
Somerset Maugham
William Somerset Maugham ( ; 25 January 1874 – 16 December 1965) was an English writer, known for his plays, novels and short stories. Born in Paris, where he spent his first ten years, Maugham was schooled in England and went to a German un ...
,
Noël Coward
Sir Noël Peirce Coward (16 December 189926 March 1973) was an English playwright, composer, director, actor, and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what ''Time'' magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and ...
and
James Michener
James Albert Michener ( or ; February 3, 1907 – October 16, 1997) was an American writer. He wrote more than 40 books, most of which were long, fictional family sagas covering the lives of many generations in particular geographic locales and ...
. The River Wing contains deluxe two-bedroom suites named after former guests or personages associated with the hotel, including
Barbara Cartland
Dame Mary Barbara Hamilton Cartland, (9 July 1901 – 21 May 2000) published as Barbara Cartland was an English writer, known as the Queen of Romance, who published both contemporary romance, contemporary and historical romance novels, the lat ...
,
Gore Vidal
Eugene Luther Gore Vidal (; born Eugene Louis Vidal, October 3, 1925 – July 31, 2012) was an American writer and public intellectual known for his epigrammatic wit, erudition, and patrician manner. Vidal was bisexual, and in his novels and ...
,
Graham Greene
Henry Graham Greene (2 October 1904 – 3 April 1991) was an English writer and journalist regarded by many as one of the leading English novelists of the 20th century. Combining literary acclaim with widespread popularity, Greene acquir ...
,
Wilbur Smith
Wilbur Addison Smith (9 January 1933 – 13 November 2021) was a Zambian-born British-South African novelist specialising in historical fiction about international involvement in Southern Africa across four centuries, seen from the viewpoints ...
,
John le Carré
David John Moore Cornwell (19 October 193112 December 2020), better known by his pen name John le Carré ( ), was a British and Irish author, best known for his espionage novels, many of which were successfully adapted for film or television. ...
,
Jim Thompson,
Norman Mailer
Nachem Malech Mailer (January 31, 1923 – November 10, 2007), known by his pen name Norman Kingsley Mailer, was an American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, activist, filmmaker and actor. In a career spanning over six decades, Mailer ...
, Thai author
Kukrit Pramoj
Mom Rajawongse Kukrit Pramoj ( th, คึกฤทธิ์ ปราโมช, , ; 20 April 1911 – 9 October 1995) was a Thai politician, scholar and professor. He was Speaker of the House of Representatives of Thailand 1973–1974. He was t ...
. Other suites are named after ships associated with the early Bangkok trade, such as ''
Otago
Otago (, ; mi, Ōtākou ) is a region of New Zealand located in the southern half of the South Island administered by the Otago Regional Council. It has an area of approximately , making it the country's second largest local government reg ...
'' (once captained by Joseph Conrad), , ''Vesatri'' and ''
Natuna
''(Sacred Ocean, Fortune Land)
, image_map =
, pushpin_map = Indonesia Riau Islands#Indonesia Sumatra#Indonesia#South China Sea
, pushpin_map_caption = Location in Riau Islands##Location in Sumatra##Location in I ...
''.
Restaurants
* Le Normandie: Contemporary French cuisine
* Lord Jim’s: Seafood and prime cut grill
* Sala Rim Naam: Traditional Thai cuisine
* Terrace Rim Naam: Authentic Thai dishes
* The China House: Classic Chinese cuisine
* Riverside Terrace: International BBQ
* The Verandah: International all-day dining
* Ciao Terrazza: Italian cuisine
* Kinu by Takagi:Japanese Kaiseki dining
Lounges and bars
*The Authors' Lounge: Traditional afternoon tea served with old world charm
*The Bamboo Bar: Live Jazz & Blues Bar
Additional services and facilities
* The Oriental Spa
* The Oriental Thai Cooking School
Awards
*Named “Best City Hotel in Asia” and one of the “Top 20 Hotels Worldwide” (''
Travel + Leisure
Travel + Leisure Co. (formerly Wyndham Destinations, Inc. and Wyndham Worldwide Corporation) is an American timeshare company headquartered in Orlando, Florida. It develops, sells, and manages timeshare properties under several vacation ownershi ...
s annual World Best Awards 2009)
*Best City Center Hotel Spa Worldwide (Luxury Travel Advisor, December 2008 - Awards of Excellence)
*Urban Spa of the Year (AsiaSpa Magazine, November 2008 - AsiaSpa Awards)
*Named one of the 400 Best Hotels (Forbes Traveler, November 2008)
*No. 8 in Overseas Leisure Hotels - Asia & the Indian Subcontinent (''
Condé Nast Traveller
''Condé Nast Traveller'' is published by Condé Nast Publications Ltd, from Vogue House in Hanover Square, Mayfair, London. It is a luxury travel magazine aimed at the upmarket, independent traveller.
It can be differentiated from the America ...
'', October 2008 - Readers’ Travel Awards)
*No. 13 in Spas in Overseas Hotel (''Condé Nast Traveller'', October 2008 - Readers’ Travel Awards)
*No. 3 in Top 20 International City Hotels (Andrew Harper’s Hideaway Report, September 2008 - The World’s Best Hotel, Resorts & Hideaways)
Photo gallery
Image:Mandarin_Oriental_Bangkok_Oriental_Spa.jpg, The Oriental Spa
See also
*
Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group
Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group International Limited (MOHG) is a Hong Kong hotel investment and management group focusing on luxury hotels, resorts, and residences, with a total of 33 properties worldwide, 20 of which are fully or partially ow ...
*
Mandarin Oriental, Hong Kong
The Mandarin Oriental, Hong Kong is a five-star hotel on Connaught Road Central in Central, Hong Kong, owned and managed by Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group.
History
Construction of the hotel on the site of the colonial Queen's Building on ...
*
Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park, London
Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park, London, is a five-star hotel, located in the Knightsbridge area of London, owned and managed by Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group. Housed in a historic, Edwardian-style building, the hotel originally opened in 1908 as th ...
*
Mandarin Oriental, New York
Mandarin Oriental, New York is a five-star hotel located in Manhattan's Deutsche Bank Center at Columbus Circle in New York City, managed by Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group. A part of the multi-use Time Warner Center development, the hotel opened ...
*
Mandarin Oriental, Miami
Mandarin Oriental, Miami is a hotel on Brickell Key in Miami, Florida, overlooking Biscayne Bay, opened in November 2000 and managed by Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group.
It is on the southern tip of Brickell Key, a , a man-made island
An artifi ...
*
East Asiatic Building
Notes
References
*
*Augustin, Andreas
"Wachtveitl - Why don’t you do some work?" Accessed 26 September 2008.
*Augustin, Andreas
"Oriental Hotel - Historic Data“ Accessed 26 September 2008.
*
*Lim, Victor
"The legendary Oriental Bangkok – the grand dame turns 130" Accessed 27 September 2008.
*
*Samuels, David
"Taste of History" Accessed 26 September 2008.
*
External links
*
Dining at Mandarin Oriental, BangkokThe Oriental Spa at Mandarin Oriental, BangkokTravel and Leisure World's Best Awards 2009
{{Coord, 13, 43, 25, N, 100, 30, 52, E, display=title
Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group
Hotels in Bangkok
Bang Rak district
Hotels established in 1876
Unregistered ancient monuments in Bangkok
Buildings and structures on the Chao Phraya River
1876 establishments in Siam