A Great Start

After extensive renovation of the existing building, The One Hotel opened on 12 February, 2006, for exactly ONE night. Well, we had to open that day as we were committed to a guest. Afterwards, I realized that I did not like the tiles that we used on the roof terrace. So, the only thing to do was rip it out and do something different. It was a great decision as the terrazzo we installed was a much nicer look. That delayed our acceptance of our second guest until April but best to get it right.

In retrospect I am truly amazed at the wonderful reception our hotel received. We made the Conde Nast Traveler Hot List for 2006. We had a two page spread in Travel+Leisure. Mentions in the New York Times, DestinAsian and (my favorite) Wallpaper really put us on the map. It is such an unusual idea, the thought of a one room hotel, that seemed to attract so much attention. Once we had the first few articles written about us, the media requests just kept pouring in. From Hong Kong, from Germany, from Turkey, from Brazil and even Latvia! I like to say that if I had built my first hotel and it had two or more rooms, instead of just one, we would have received 90% less press. That was why the idea of a one room hotel was so brilliant.

When we finally got open and started receiving guests in mid-2006, for the first few months I went to the airport and met every guest upon arrival. We believe that once you land here in Siem Reap, you are OUR guest and as such we meet you at the airport, take care of you during your stay and then see you off at the airport when you leave. So few hotels can really offer such service but we believe it is critical to our success. I was also interested to see what kind of guest we would attract. By the end of the year it was clear: we had THE BEST guests! Fun, intelligent, successful, well-traveled (of course) but just the nicest people. And when you have a one room hotel and a one great guest, it is a pleasure. Here is what some of our guest have had to say about us on Trip Advisor.

Then again, when you have one room and one not so nice guest, it can be a bit painful. Our staff will do, and have done, just about everything for our guests. But somethings we just did not anticipate. Like the guest who went out at 5am for sunrise at the temples and came back at 7am and wanted to know why his room had not been cleaned yet. Uh, it is 7am. It was a good lesson for us to learn because certainly if we knew they would be back by 7am we could have gotten the room ready by then, after all they were our only guests. It does make you wonder sometimes as recently we had a guest stay with us that had booked many months before. When they arrived they were surprised to learn it was a one room hotel. Huh? How could they have missed that detail? Of course they had a great time but I had a chuckle about that. I must say that I am very, very grateful for that our guests are so happy with our staff and our hotel. It validates everything about what being a hotelier is all about.