On this episode we hear from Anchalika and her story and journey into hospitality. Her story starts with education, where every Asian family wants the best education for their children and she had finished with her masters by her early 20s. Then was invited to join GE leadership development program and her career journey started there. She stayed with them for several years, based in US, Singapore, London and with lots of travel. She was in compliance, auditing and travelled the world with her job staying at many hotels. For her holidays, when she could choose where to stay she would look for cute B&Bs, unique hotels for a different experience. One day she woke up in London, thinking to herself, what she was still doing there when all her family were in Thailand. Which is when she decided to convert their family beach home in Pran Buri into a hotel. She instilled in the hotel all the things that she loved and enjoyed and six months before they even opened they were already fully booked. One of the building blocks for her hotels was driven by a social cause at its heart. She set up the Pure Blue Foundation to protect the environment and work with the local community. She has gone on to opening more hotels in Thailand, with the same ethos in mind. While she may not have always known what she was doing, she did what felt right, went with her emotions, justified it with analytics and has created a beautiful brand.
Link to her podcast episode here.
Link to the Aleenta website: https://www.aleenta.com
