Holiday season sees B2bn boon for tourism sector

PHUKET: Businesses in Phuket’s tourism sector enjoyed a prosperous festive season, with many hotels fully booked and more than 2 billion baht generated by the industry during the period December 24 through January 2.

Runjuan Tongrut, assistant director of Tourism Authority of Thailand Southern Region 4 Office, made the announcement at a press conference on January 2.

A large number of Thais and foreigners came to Phuket to celebrate Christmas and the New Year, with many Europeans choosing to stay on the island beyond the New Year, K. Runjuan said.

She added that an estimated five million people visited Phuket last year, which equated to an estimated 95 billion baht generated by the tourism industry in Phuket.

“The numbers could be even higher, we aren’t certain yet. Many hotels and airlines have been and are completely booked for the period October last year to March this year,” she said.

Between October 2007 and March 2008, 220 domestic and 287 international flights will have arrived in Phuket every week. Of the international flights, 90 are charter flights, compared with only 35 weekly charter flights in 2006, K. Runjuan said.

“We have a lot of new charter flights arriving from countries such as Russia, the United Arab Emirates, Estonia, Finland, and the Netherlands, and more from Eastern Europe,” she added.