TAT governor Yuthasak Supasorn said that with the estimated volume of domestic tours during the special holiday period the hotel occupancy rate was expected at 63%, reports Bangkok Post.
In the first two days of the long holiday, most trips were made to destinations within a radius of 200-300 kilometres, Mr Yuthasak said.
"Negative factors continue to be inflation and fuel prices that remain high though tending to decline. They are major obstacles to Thais’ spending," Mr Yuthasak said.
The government announced a special holiday on Monday (July 31) at short notice, apparently to stimulate domestic tourism. If the extended holiday period had been announced long beforehand, people might have planned overseas trips including to Japan as the yen is fairly weak, the TAT governor said.
Last week the cabinet declared July 31 a special holiday to create a six-day break from Friday last week (July 28) to Wednesday this week (Aug 2).
According to Lertchai Wangtrauldee, Director of the Phuket office of the TAT Phuket, over 234,000 people can visit the island of Phuket during the extended holiday, bringing B2.2bn in tourism revenue for the island (out of B16.6bn nationwide).
Ready to welcome holidaymakers in Phuket are 1,890 hotels with 101,556 rooms available. Hotel occupancy is forecast at 65.87%, according to Mr Lertchai. The is slightly above the nationwide average of 63%, revealed by Mr Yuthasak.
The aforementioned figures give an average of B9,402 of revenue per Phuket trip comared to B3,347 per trip nationwide.