Owners of the US$1.6 billion project are targeting to attract 250,000 visitors a day, mostly from mainland China and Hong Kong.
Bangkok’s riverside luxury mixed-use development Iconsiam which houses luxury shops, high-end-condos and a large performance auditorium as key attractions, opened its doors last week.
Owners of the US$1.6 billion project are targeting to attract 250,000 visitors a day, mostly from mainland China and Hong Kong.
The mall houses international brands such as Louis Vuitton, Hermes and Apple, as well as 300 local food and handicraft stalls representing the country’s 77 provinces.
The ultra luxury development also includes the Magnolias Waterfront Residences and The Residences at Mandarin Oriental, Bangkok. It will even have its own monorail.
The second phase of the Iconsiam project, which includes a 3,000-seat auditorium and a museum along the Chao Phraya River, is scheduled to open next year.
But wooing Chinese tourists remains a delicate task. Thailand suffered a slump this year when a boat incident in Phuket had killed 47 mainland Chinese tourists over the summer.
Chadatip Chutrakul, the chief executive of Siam Piwat Co, one of the three developers of the project, expects strong performance from Chinese visitors. The company also manages three major shopping malls: Siam Paragon, Siam Center and Siam Discovery.
“Chinese are the biggest spenders,” she said, adding that Hong Kong and mainland tourists accounted for up to 25% of tourist-generated revenue at the three malls, South China Morning Post reported.
Average per-head spending of all tourists per trip in the three One Siam malls rose 15% year-on-year in the first 10 months of this year, she said.
Chutrakul said the group would invest three billion baht to build a new skytrain – named Gold Line Monorail – to connect it to the city’s exisiting mass transit lines. Currently, the complex can be only accessed by boat or car. The proposed monorail will begin operating next year.