Quanchai Panitpichetvong, the youngest son of the family that owns the Ban Pong Sugar Group, claims to be one of the world's laziest  people.

This characteristic has led him to create a small luxury resort with only 52 rooms, but also a panoramic view of the Andaman Sea and services to pamper the laziest of guests.

Named Zeavola, the resort was designed and built under the theme of "Charms of Rural Thailand" and occupies nearly 4 hectares of land at Tong Cape in the northern part of Krabi province's Koh Phi Phi.

Surprisingly, the resort was named one of the 60 best new hotels in the world by leading global travel-guide magazine Conde Nast Traveller in May - and it has yet to be officially opened.

Only three days after the resort's soft opening last year, two women arrived as guests and called for such services that Quanchai sent a "red alarm" to his staff, instructing them to use the utmost care with the two newcomers. Before they left, the women revealed themselves to be writers for the magazine. One of them delivered an unforgettable comment as she was leaving: "I know that no newly opened hotel is perfect. But you are very good."

One month later, Quanchai and his Zeavola Resort welcomed an official delegation from the magazine.

In his late 30s and with an MBA degree from the University of Westminster in London, Quanchai could have been regarded as a workaholic just three years ago. But while waiting wearily for a flight back to Bangkok one day, he began asking himself, "Why am I doing this?"

He had been working for his family's sugar business since 1990, after earning a bachelor's degree in political science from Thammasat University. At that time, he was director of Ban Pong Sugar's executive office.

"I worked hard, had little sleep and got no days off," he said.

He took great pride in being a leading director of Ban Pong's export-import operations, with a mission to seek revenues from abroad. His main duty at the time was providing consultancy to privately owned cane plants in the Philippines and Indonesia.

Then one day in 2003, Quanchai decided it was time to make his dream come true.

"Running a resort has been on my mind for a long time. Right now, I'm itching to do it," he said.

The result is Zeavola, which stands out from other resorts with its uniquely designed rural-Thai-style huts. The services are as good as can be found in a five-star hotel.

Quanchai explained he was too lazy and bored to try anything new with his resort but at the same time not keen on copying others.

"When I travel, I find a place that is best for me, and I go back there time after time and do the same things. As I said, I'm a lazy man."

With his mix of habits and lessons learned from his MBA studies, Zeavola was created in accordance with Quanchai's precise instructions. It grew from the existing PP Coral Resort, which had been owned by his family for 10 years.

After conducting market research, he spent almost one year on design work. He called in many well-known interior and exterior designers to change the old resort into his new Zeavola.

His research led him to believe it should be a luxury property serving the high-end market.

Then came his awkward demands on his designers: "No temples, no palaces, no traditional Thai-style houses, no colonial-style houses, no Balinese-style houses and no hotel format." The qualities that best described what he wanted were lazy, informal, simple, rural but able to represent "real Thainess".

"You will feel cosy inside each villa, like you're staying at home, and it's comfortable to lie down. It's decorated with wooden furniture and decorative items, different from hotels," he said.

Quanchai set up a 50:50 joint venture with the country's leading contractor, Sino-Thai Engineering and Construction, to build Zeavola, but it still went way over its Bt300-million budget and ended up costing Bt480 million. This stretched the resort's break-even period from four to eight years.

Zeavola is operated under the joint venture, PP Coral Resort, of which Quanchai is managing director.

For would-be guests, living in a rural-Thai-style hut does not mean a smaller cost. The tariff is Bt6,000 to Bt32,000 per villa per night.

However, the room rate supports special care for the resort's environment. A desalination plant converts sea water to fresh water, and all garbage is carried away to a landfill on the mainland.

Quanchai said that up to now, Zeavola had been "test running". Promotion and marketing campaigns have been running in the UK, particularly in London, for more than a year. Official openings have been delayed many times, due to storms and unrest in Thailand's southern provinces, but Quanchai says the opening will happen soon.

Meanwhile, he is satisfied with an occupancy rate of about 30 per cent and spends a lot of time scuba diving near the island.

"I go diving as often as possible," he said. "I like watching easily accessible things, like shoals of batfish or sea fans." And, as when travelling, he dives to the same places and does the same things repeatedly. Like he said, he's lazy, and if Zeavola's guests are anything like Quanchai, they'll come back time after time, because they're too lazy to find any other place. It augurs well for Zeavola's profits.

Sasithorn Ongdee

The Nation