Wicky Sundram - Boat Lagoon's new brand builder

by Phuket Gazette on 10 Aug 2016 Last week the Global Marina Institute (GMI) announced that Wicky Sundram, the new executive director at Phuket Boat Lagoon, was the latest ‘Certified Marina Professional’ (CMP) to join its ranks. Wicky is only the sixth person in Asia to receive this accolade and the first in Thailand.

That’s a fine achievement for someone who, when he first joined the Royal Langkawi Yacht Club (RLYC) eighteen years ago, hardly knew one end of a boat from the other.

Today, when someone arrives in Langkawi by sea, one of the first things they see is the impressive field of masts protruding from the 250 berth RLYC – now the largest marina in Malaysia.

When Wicky joined RLYC as General Manager, however, it was a far more modest affair; just fifty-something berths and a nice, quiet clubhouse.

At the time, Wicky had built a solid career in the high-traffic food and beverage trade, and it was his hospitality acumen that the RLYC’s holding company hoped he would bring to the marina operations. Even so, Wicky wasn’t sure the move would be a good fit.

“I asked them to give me six months,” he says as we relax over a refreshing beverage on the boardwalk at the Boat Lagoon. “But what if someone comes and asks me something about boats?”

Eighteen years later and the GMI certification would seem to prove that Wicky has picked up quite a bit of knowledge on the subject, much of it garnered while managing the RLYC through a series of redevelopments, upgrades and facelifts that has turned it into the award-winning marina we see today.

In 2003, the club was instrumental in launching the annual Royal Langkawi International Regatta, with Wicky and his team rolling around the region for a year before its inception, gleaning all the knowledge they could from the established regattas, which of course meant spending quite a bit of time in Phuket.

Full story: http://www.phuketgazette.net/phuket-people/Profile-Wicky-Sundram-Boat-Lagoons-new-brand/65361