For decades family-owned Italthai did little with its hotel business. third-generation scion Yuthachai Charanachitta is quickly changing that.
Fourteen years ago Yuthachai Charanachitta returned home to Thailand after finishing college in upstate New York. He was 24 and had spent half his life studying in the U.S. Before joining the family company, he planned to gain outside experience. But he had barely started consulting work at KPMG when disaster struck.
A small-plane crash in April 2003 claimed the life of his father, Adisorn Charanachitta. Yuthachai’s mother, Nijaporn Charanachitta, stepped in, and she and her brother Premchai Karnasuta ran Italian-Thai Development. Their father, Chaijudh Karnasuta, founded the 60-yearold construction-and-engineering company, which had built much of Bangkok, from the subway system to Suvarnabhumi Airport.
The family’s portfolio also included hotels, and that’s where Yuthachai checked in after switching plans and signing onto the family business. Its properties included the Amari brand, plus the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, the 140-year-old riverside gem that’s hosted presidents, princes and writers from Richard Nixon to Joseph Conrad. Even when he was a child, hotels cast a spell over him. “I remember all the times going with my father for meals at the Oriental. I loved the hospitality and got to know the staff. It really felt like family.”
Soon he was making the rounds of properties, working a few months at the Oriental, learning the trade. Still in his 20s, he was already married, had started his own family and was running the hotel division. “Life moved fast,” he recalls. “I had to jump in quickly.”
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