Thailand’s leading resort island Phuket has come face-to-face with the reality that it is tourism high-season will not see a marked reopening to overseas travelers. In the wake of the dismantling of the ‘Phuket Model’ and refocus by the government on using Bangkok as a single international gateway, there is increasing alarm over the lack of a path forward for the island’s rice bowl-tourism.
The key tourism indicator for the island is airlift and Phuket International Airport is the gateway for 70-80% of visitors to the destination. According to Airports of Thailand (AOT) data, 121,530 passengers arrived in the month of September. This equates to just over 4,000 arrivals a day and a portion of these include local residents and business people. Comparing year-on-year data, 2019’s daily arrivals which included international travelers was five times higher.
Commenting on the toxic situation, hospitality consulting group C9 Hotelworks Managing Director Bill Barnett says “there is a dramatic change in the market mix where the current domestic-led average length of stay for hotels is approximately 1.8 days, while for foreign travelers it’s more than double this amount. What this means for hotels is severely reduced overall demand across the island’s entire accommodation sector.”
Looking forward to the high season when the numbers spike upwards in the four months of December through March, the high season months last year equated to more than one-third of annual demand. Total domestic and international arrivals at the airport totaled just over 9 million in 2019. Adding in high season shoulder months into the equation, the stark economic impact of Phuket’s economic seasonality is reflected in the fact that well over half of the island’s tourism arrivals are packed into a six-month period.
Now, nearly two months into that timeframe, what is apparent is it’s virtually impossible to save the high season and hotel owners in 2021 will be forced to contend with historically the lowest trading months of the year by May. Given these grim prospects, C9 is predicting large-scale job losses and business closures given there is no light at the end of the pandemic-induced tunnel.
“Taking a 360-degree view on the restricted domestic-only demand, you have to take into account that Phuket’s current registered accommodation supply has continued to surge to its present size of 90,267 rooms in 1,773 hotels/tourism establishments” adds Barnett. “Of this supply upper midscale, upscale, and luxury properties of international standards are approximately 25% of the total rooms.”
