By Henry Henderson
For this week’s interview, Junior Communications Officer Henry Henderson sat down with Alexis de Suremain, founder of the hospitality brand MAADS.
Their discussion began with the origins of his hotel journey in Cambodia and the lingering impacts of the COVID pandemic on Cambodia’s tourism sector.
The pair then turned to Alexis‘ passion for innovation and sustainability, the need to broaden Cambodia’s brand beyond Angkor Wat, and the way these concepts can be synthesised to transform the Kingdom’s position into a premier destination for international tourists.
Phnom Penh’s Early Tourism Landscape
Henry: Your hospitality projects have ranged from fashion and lifestyle spaces to boutique hotels, city properties, island resorts, and jungle lodges. How did this evolution happen, and how did Phnom Penh’s early tourism landscape shape the concepts you developed?
Alexis: My first business here was in fashion. My wife was selling clothing and we opened an outlet on street Pasteur called “Elsewhere” selling clothes that were made with natural fabrics. It was in an old colonial house and we had a cafe and a restaurant there, with a small swimming pool, and we started doing events.
And after that we had the opportunity of renting the Pavilion, which we weren’t really looking for, but when we visited the place, we immediately thought it would make a nice little guest house. There were just two rooms, but we convinced the owner to add rooms and bathrooms and a swimming pool and that’s how it started.
For the next 10 years, until 2016–17, it was a race to get more rooms because the market was underserved. Whoever managed to put a hand on a building that could accommodate people would fill in instantly — pretty different from now — so we started opening more and more properties.
We opened many: Pavilion, The Kabiki, Blue Lime, Tea House, Plantation, Elsewhere Boutique Hotel, and Kirirom Mountain Lodge in the Kirirom mountains. 2017–18 were the peak years, and in 2019 it started to drop significantly. One year before COVID, it sharply started going down and then COVID of course, and that was a big game changer.
Henry: You mentioned the sharp decline that began even before COVID, followed by a very difficult period for the sector. From your perspective, what did recovery look like in Cambodia, and where do you think the industry struggled the most?
Alexis: The private sector was totally focused on how they survive from one day to the next. Unfortunately, nothing was done by the private sector side nor the government side to say, “Okay, once all of this is finished, how do we reposition ourselves as a destination within the context of Southeast Asia.”
That’s where I think we started missing the target, because other countries prepared and we didn’t. Mainly the private sector, I would say, did not prepare a stronger positioning after COVID settled. Our neighbours did and they benefited from a much stronger recovery than us, specifically because of that.
We’re still in the aftershocks of COVID, still looking for a direction where we can differentiate ourselves from the neighbouring destinations with a strengthened identity.
Hopefully at one point we get to this critical moment where we all sit down and work together, to redefine our direction and diversify our offerings. We are currently submitting many proposals to the competent authorities to propose different attractions, different tourism offers, which would be very innovative and even disruptive to the sector.
Identity & The Need For Stronger Differentiation
Henry: You’ve spoken about Cambodia’s tourism identity and the need for stronger differentiation. MAADS is also known for its research-driven approach, particularly around bioclimatic design and architecture. How do design, sustainability, and storytelling intersect in your work?
Alexis: When you do research and development, it’s not necessarily directly implementable.
For example, tourism is a highly polluting industry in many aspects. My business depends very much on Westerners and a big aspect of tourism’s pollution is the carbon footprint of air travel.
On my side, I think we have a duty to do research and development and be very aware of our impacts. Then we can direct some of our effort and resources and see if we can improve.
How can we adjust to that and improve the ratio of the energy we’re using or the ratio of the space that we put concrete versus greenery and so on. We have a branch of our operations which is specifically doing research on bio-climatic solutions for tropical countries.
This is a bit of my passion, and so we developed a range of solutions where we work with what I call thermoscaping, which is studying the thermal environment of where we live, and redefining where we need heat management and temperature management.
My question was, is it really necessary to cool down a volume of 80 cubic metres when actually the living space, most of the time, is only 8 cubic metres? Do we need to have the capacity to cool down spaces full time? Or is a system strong enough to regulate temperatures for seven hours or eight hours sufficient. You can completely rethink the way of living in that space. You can rethink where you allocate energy, how you allocate energy, and which systems you use.
I think it’s part of the duty of the hotelier to at least think about that. We are very lucky to have people that are passing through our spaces. They don’t always stay long – two days, three days, four days max. We should put them into environments where they will experience something different from what they have at home.
Henry: You’ve mentioned how this research and development extends beyond your own properties. From your experience, how open are external developers and businesses to adopting these kinds of environmental and bioclimatic solutions?
Alexis: One project I’m very proud of is Connexion, because we managed to convince the owner that the main burden in tropical cities is the urban heat island.
The more you build and the more you verticalise a city, the less ventilation you have, the less wind passes through to naturally cool spaces down. The only way to get rid of heat is cross-ventilation. There’s no other solution. In order to do that, you need to secure enough space on every floor to allow air to pass through the entire building.
At Connexion, we sacrificed basically one third of the volume because on every floor, instead of extending walls all the way up to the ceiling, two metres were kept open for air flow through a building that is 70,000 square meters.
Authenticity, Experience-Led Tourism, and Lower Environmental Impact
Henry: Cambodia is increasingly discussed in relation to travel trends such as authenticity, experience-led tourism, and lower environmental impact. How well do you think Cambodia is currently aligned with these shifts?
Alexis: I’ve been trying to convince the sector, whether it’s private or public, that Cambodia could be a very strong aquatic water-based destination. We have the seventh best-known river in the world: The Mekong. It has a massive brand awareness abroad, and it’s not yet tapped.
We also have one of the only rivers that reverses, the Tonle Sap, so that’s already something very unique. The Tonle Sap Lake changes significantly, depending on the season. The seasonality in Cambodia is based not on temperature but on water. The very essence of Khmer culture is based on the cycle of water and Siem Reap is already considered a hydraulic city. We should position Cambodia much more as a water, or hydraulic, destination.
Plus, there’s a big trend of staying on water, sleeping on floating structures. The opportunities are massive in that direction. I’m not sure decision makers are sufficiently aware of that. Hopefully that changes in the future, but it’s a huge and unique selling point that we could turn into an advantage that neighboring countries don’t have.
We’re too much of a single-use destination with Angkor Wat being so powerful: visitors think that Angkor Wat is Cambodia, and once they’ve seen it, they tick the box, and they’re done. Our neighbours don’t have such a singularly powerful attraction, but the strength of Angkor Wat can overshadow the entire rest of Cambodia.
Henry: You’ve touched on both the challenges and untapped opportunities within Cambodia’s tourism sector. Looking ahead, how do you see MAADS evolving within this landscape?
Alexis: Ideally, I would like to spread a bit more throughout the country and, ideally, I’d like to do a lot more water-related projects. We’re thinking completely out of the box and looking at various floating solutions that are very innovative.
At the moment we’re working with inflatable, hexagon tubes. We can move the tubes to form different platforms, all of them in hexagon-based shapes. The customer says which kind of platform they want to create, so it’s a tailor-made suite for him and his family or friends.
The idea is that we need to encourage being more creative. Not just following the trends, but getting ahead of the trend and propose things that are out of the box that people haven’t seen yet. This could help get Cambodia back into the race of a premier destination.
If I had a message to the authorities, it is please support operators in being more proactive and more creative in developing their destination. Don’t try to copy what succeeded with our neighbors, but try to build something which is ours, with innovative ideas that have not yet been implemented elsewhere. This way we cand grow our destination with its own identity.
Henry: To close, is there anything MAADS is currently working toward—or any broader ambition you’d like to share for the future of Cambodia’s tourism and creative industries?
Alexis: I would love to see are basically pilot projects, proof of concepts that could then be copy-pasted outside. So that we are not just in our limited market here but developing things here and that can then start existing outside.
At the moment, not many of the brands or initiatives that are developed Cambodia are exported. My dream would be to be able to develop alternative concepts here, test them, and then deploy them outside. This would start growing the image of a country which is dynamic, where solutions that are created in Cambodia can also be successful elsewhere.
