Poompong Patpongpanit’s affable demeanour belies a quick business mind and strong service mentality that guides his business philosophy, discovers Jinda Wedel
Poompong Patpongpanit enters with the stride of a man in control of his destiny. Though he introduces himself simply as Poom, one gets the impression that this energetic entrepreneur can hardly be represented by a single syllable. Indeed, his business pedigree is generations in the making – his family, after all, owns the Patpong area named after them.
Actually, the story of how Patpong, the famous (or is it infamous?) street, came about is echoed in how his latest project, Paresa Resort in Phuket, was born. Both began as property acquired for personal use and ended up as highvalue real estate thanks to careful development. Growing up in the Patpong family he says, “I had always wanted to work in business.” A nine-year stint in Australia attending prestigious Geelong Grammar School followed by Australian National University, Canberra led Poompong to studying for a degree in management at the University of Southern California. He then returned to Thailand, where he did project finance work for Safari World and managed his family’s various property holdings.
With an eye trained by years in the family business to spot unique opportunities, Poompong found himself in the midst of a search that would end with the creation of his boutique resort. “I was just looking for a vacation home,” he says. The quest had taken him 10 years before he found a five-rai patch of land on a Phuket cliff overlooking the azure Andaman Sea with 100-yearold banyan trees “as wide as five men abreast”, and everything clicked. “I thought, ‘This is it!’” Poompong recounts. Over the years, he gradually added to the site, buying up adjacent land as it became available. He enlisted his cousin, Somrudee Amatayakul, to help him manage the resort. Now the 49-room resort covers 15 rai carefully designed to integrate the indoor décor with the outdoor tropical forest. The resort provides guests with the opportunity to enjoy Poompong’s ideal of a fully restful vacation drawn from his travels all over the world, including Italy, Brazil, Egypt and Ecuador, which are among his favourite places. Although the resort is intricately planned and decorated, service is key. “You take care of people,” advises Poompong, “and they take care of you.”
This mode of thinking is what drove two earlier projects as well, DC One Dental Clinic in Bangkok and DC One Med Spa in Phuket. The Phuket location is in fact three specialised service centres, offering dermatology and non-surgical facial procedures at Face2Face Skin and Aesthetic Centre, a wellness spa, and a world-class dental clinic. Yet DC One Med Spa is anything but cold and clinical. Poompong’s philosophy of approaching business from the consumer side resulted in the medi-spa’s relaxed, modern-minimalist setting. “It just feels good to make people happy,” he explains
The head of DC One, internationally renowned dentist Yupares Nimkarn, is also Poompong’s wife of 15 years. Poompong chuckles as he remembers how they met. “She was a trainee at Bangkok Bank,” he recounts, “and my friend was the organiser of the training course.”
Nowadays, Poompong rotates 10 days in Bangkok and 10 days in Phuket. He manages his Phuket ventures by phone and e-mail, but plans to eventually move there. As for the future, Poompong concentrates on extending the Paresa Resort and DC One brand to greater audiences, perhaps internationally. “I want to make sure our core values – being uniquely different in look and feel and having Thai hospitality – are consistent with the test of time and future expansions.”