Phuket Opinion: Does Phuket need 14mn tourists?

Dr Chayanon was speaking as special guest at the meeting of the Rotary Club of Patong Beach on Tuesday night (Jan 17). His presentation was very well received. His question was aimed squarely at the current push by national figures to quickly resume large numbers of tourists under the banner of “tourism recovery”.

Dr Chayanon, who holds a PhD in Economics from Chulalongkorn University, already has a reputation for voicing key concerns. In December 2019, he warned that Phuket was at the “tipping point” for the volume of tourists visiting the island.

On Tuesday, Dr Chayanon pointed out that international tourists were already spending more than their predecessors in 2019.

International tourist expenditure in November 2019 was B45,105 per person per trip, with a total of 803,070 international arrivals landing on the island during that month. In November 2022, the figure stood at B49,689 per person per trip, with 479,080 international tourists arriving during the 30 days.

The record during the ‘COVID recovery period’ stands at B56,213 in April 2022, during the height of the mandatory COVID-19 quarantine at ‘hospitels’ – an aspect of the COVID-19 entry requirements that did Thailand’s tourism reputation no favours.

Dr Chayanon on Tuesday emphasised that the expenditure was per person per trip, and voiced his agreement with attendees that large numbers of recent international arrivals were staying much longer than the traditional three to five days of stay by people on actual holidays. He said he was on the cusp of verifying this with the release of December figures by the Tourism Industry Data Center for Research and Development (TIDC).

The TIDC has launched its ‘Big Data’ platform through the website travellink.go.th*, from which Dr Chayanon presented his figures. The platform is the tourism data collaboration that Bhummikitti Ruktaengam, now Advisory Chairman of the Phuket Tourist Association, championed during the height of the COVID-19 tourism shutdown while calling for Phuket to receive tourists through what later was called the ‘Sandbox’ policy.

The figures presented on travellink.go.th, provided by a broad spectrum of private sector players from across the industry as well as government agencies, are far more realistic than those promoted by particular government agencies alone. By sheer example, Dr Chayanon identifies with “only” 14mn international tourists visiting Phuket in 2019, not the far greater numbers reported by some government agencies. Private sector players in the industry do not double count the same tourist arriving and departing the island, a practice that gives a false indication of exactly how many tourists actually visit Phuket.

Yet Phuket is already enjoying a large number of visitors, Dr Chayanon pointed out – as many residents in Phuket will attest that traffic on the roads is plainly indicating. Again, by confirmed numbers, Phuket during the New Year holidays a few weeks ago actually had more people arrive on the island for the New Year celebrations than we did in 2019. Fact.

Further, as detailed above, current spending patterns are higher. The impending arrival of large numbers of Chinese travellers will only boost those numbers. Chinese tourists do spend, but they spend differently, Dr Chayanon said. Chinese spend more on Food & Beverage and Shopping than on Accommodation, he explained.

Yet just how many more visitors Phuket needs for its tourism industry to recover is the critical question right now. With national figures touting that up to 7 million visitors from Mainland China alone were expected this year, key tourism figures are urging the government to take steps to help facilitate the influx of mass inbound tourists.

What has been missing among these calls is any recognition that the volume of inbound tourists on mass travel packages will need to be controlled.

That message has now been delivered loud and clear. Now we get to wait and see if anyone actually listened.

* Travellink.go.th is in Thai language only, but a translation app should be good enough for most people to understand what information is being presented.