Baan Luang Rajamaitri Historic Inn
Muang District, Chanthaburi Province, Thailand
Built over 150 years ago, Baan Luang Rajamaitri Historic Inn is the former residence of Luang Rajamaitri (Poom Punnasri), the founder of Eastern Thailand’s rubber latex industry.
Located in the Chanthabun Riverside Community on Chanthaburi Province’s first street, the ten-room boutique hotel has been developed and operated by Chantabun Rak Dee Co., Ltd., a social enterprise seed-funded by the local community, the people of Chanthaburi and those supporting the conservation and revitalisation of the neighbourhood that a century ago was Chanthaburi’s major trading and shipping hub.
The goal of the enterprise is to showcase how heritage architecture could be sensibly, viably and sustainably conserved for future generations.
Baan Luang Rajamaitri is the culmination of several years of effort spearheaded by the Arsom Silp Institute of the Arts, a non-profit organisation, that seeks to sustainably conserve Chanthabun Riverside Community’s heritage buildings and maintain the original lifestyle of the community’s residents both economically and culturally while preventing the neighbourhood from becoming overly commercialised and overrun by mass tourism.
The property is one of the four recipients of the 2015 UNESCO Asia‐Pacific Award of Merit for Cultural Heritage Conservation, with UNESCO praising the hotel for setting an example for other historic communities in Thailand with its community-based conservation effort.
