Probably the Oriental Bangkok is still on top of our Best Asian Hotels Survey, but from memory there are a few dissenters. An item in Bangkok's Nation over the weekend featured an interview with Kurt Wachtveitl, the general manager behind the Oriental for 35 years.

Though some newer pretenders have popped up in Bangkok's sophisticated luxury hotel scene like the splendid Sukothai, there is something about the tradition of the Oriental that makes it almost impossible to knock off it's perch amongst frequent travelers to the City of Angels.

The Oriental has just completed a major renovation and of course only a small part of it houses the original grand 126 year old hotel. Make sure your client is paying though. Rates range from US $280 (Baht 12,000) for a standard room through $2,200 (Baht 90,000) for the Oriental Suite.

Interestingly in an Asia where new hotels have sprung up from nowhere in the past 10 years, especially in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok, Wachtveitl "...believes Asian hotels are on the ascent while Europe's are on a steep decline. In a recent trip to France with his wife, he found the hotels there had "gone down the tubes".

"At five minutes past 10am we found it is impossible to get a piece of bread and a cup of coffee in the whole hotel because all the restaurants were closed between 10am and noon," he fumed. "We were paying $210 a night at the five-star Sofitel Vichy for a simple room. And we had to drive a kilometre to get something to eat." Worse of all, he noted, the French staff appear to take delight in saying "Non!" to guests.

He blames the French 35-hour work week for the poor level of service. "It doesn't work. France has 80 million tourists a year, but not much longer, I should think."

Service is king says Wachtveitl, and that is not surprising given that service is very much of the Bangkok Oriental brand. There are very few other hotels springing up in Asia however that meet the same standards. The reason is a desperate shortage of trained staff in those countries that have experienced the hotel boom. In Kuala Lumpur for example, a new Sheraton, the new Mandarin Oriental, a J.W. Marriot, the Renaissance and New World, the ostentatious Palace of the Golden Horses have all sprung up among others in the last 5 to 6 years. Malaysia is still waiting for the tourist and business boom that would justify these hotels - in the meantime rates remain rockbottom. Right in the middle of Kuala Lumpur's Golden Triangle, an uncompleted grey hulk has stood behind a sign announcing that a new Hyatt is being built for close on 5 years. But worse still, there is just not enough human trained human resources to make these places work. Staff training in the hotel industry in Malaysia is abysmal, and there is not the culture of service that has made Singapore, Hong Kong, and Bangkok hotels so famous. The traditional business hotels have some substance, (e.g. Shangri-La, and Regent) though not the "new" modern brand of the new ones - but they seem to have a monopoly on well trained and experienced staff. While the Mandarin Oriental tries, their staff seem more adept at making locals feel insignificant in their push to make the Oriental in KL the exclusive KL hotel. Those foreigners and locals who do stay are not overly impressed given the quality of the Mandarin hotels in other capital cities.

The general level of service in Singapore however is much higher, who have had much less of a hotel boom.

It would be nice to feel that Asian hotels are on the ascent, but we need more managers like Wachtveitl. He states he has his breakfast in the main coffee house every morning to get a feel for the place and meet staff and guests. Management by walkabout is what we call it in Australia. Yet how many other GM's really do this seriously in Asian management cultures which instinctively increase the distance between the customer and the boss at every promotion?. Less emphasis on buildings and superstructure and more on human resources would help.