2 BE

So with The One Hotel up and running, and running into its limitations, it was time to expand. Opposite Linga Bar and next door to The One Hotel was an empty building. And I mean empty. The old structure was demolished and a new shell built. It sat empty for a long time as it was big and the rent was considered expensive. I always dreaded that someone would come along and rent it and put in some awful business that would hurt my hotel and bar (think karaoke brothel). Finally, after more than a year looking at this empty building, I started to give thought to renting it. I knew that I could add hotel rooms on the second and third floors but was not sure what to do with the ground floor. Since I am the sole owner of Linga and The One Hotel and have financed everything myself, I wanted to continue to do that. However, I did not have the money or or concept for what to do with the ground floor. Finally, I decided that I would rent the entire building and find some partners to do the ground floor.

So, now that I decided to do a second hotel, I contact the previous design team of Ivan and Lisa and we started to come up with a new hotel. I had decided the hotel would have two rooms, one on the second floor and one on the third floor, both facing Linga Bar. I was trying to decide what to call the hotel when I realized that the Khmer word for the number 2 sounds very much like BE (more like a P sound). The One Hotel = one room and Hotel Be = 2 rooms. And, I love the Khmer symbol for 2, just look at the logo:


There was only one problem: Ivan convinced me that the space on the third floor facing towards the Old Market could make a really nice room with exterior atrium feeling and roof deck. I agreed and thus it became a three room hotel. But I loved the name so I thought, what the heck, 2 will represent my second hotel. If you look at the logo and the red part it reads 2 BE, so that is where are email address came from 2be@hotelbeangkor.com

Hotel Be became the perfect solution to the limitations of The One Hotel. It gave us the opportunity to accommodate families, three adults in one room, two or three couples traveling together etc. And, with a different price structure, it enabled us to appeal to more customers. It is not like adding a three room hotel solves all of our limitations but it certainly helps to round out our little empire in Siem Reap. How we got to the final product of Hotel Be is great story, which I will happily tell on the next post.