Tourists return ...

[Flashermac]

Tourists Return to Tsunami Hit Thai Resorts

 

Mar 24, 2005

 

 

By Nopporn Wong-Anan

 

 

PHUKET, Thailand (Reuters) - A government marketing blitz and range of cheap room deals are luring tourists back to Thailand's tsunami-hit Andaman coast, but visitor numbers are still well down on a year ago, hotel operators say.

 

Three months after the killer wave, occupancy rates on the resort island of Phuket, which has 32,000 rooms, had hit 40 percent from single digits in January but were still well under the 75 percent reached last March, Phuket Hotel Association chief Pattanapong Aikwanich told Reuters.

 

"Thanks to all promotion campaigns, we now have more tourists coming to Phuket, especially families on discount tours," Pattanapong said, noting in particular a state-funded jaunt for 1,500 foreign travel agents and journalists.

 

"We expect a return to normal in the next high season as a large number of hotels in Khao Lak have disappeared," he said, referring to the beach around 62 miles north of Phuket where hundreds of foreign tourists died in the Dec. 26 disaster.

 

Thai government records say 5,395 people, of whom 1,953 holidaymakers are believed to be foreigners, were killed when the tsunami struck six southern provinces on Dec. 26.

 

Media images of piles of corpses and debris on beaches and fears of a recurrence of the disaster prompted many European and American holidaymakers to cancel their winter breaks.

 

Asian tourists stayed away because of fear of spirits wandering the beaches.

 

Gradually, however, visitors are overcoming such concerns.

 

"It is very bad to be afraid of everything. I am more afraid of you than the tsunami," Swede Gunnar Hallberg, who has visited Thailand six times, told a Reuters reporter as he boarded a ferry on Phuket to go and see Thai friends on the other side of the island.

 

Despite the confidence of the likes of Hallberg, Pattanapong said many tour agents were still concerned about the lack of a tsunami warning system, despite government pledges to set one up.

 

"The government keeps saying there will be one, but when we asked what it looked like or where it would be installed, they couldn't give us a decent answer," Pattanapong said.

 

Tara MacDowel, a 31-year-old British holidaymaker who has just spent a week on the tsunami-hit Thai island of Koh Lanta, east of Phuket, said it was important visitors did not allow fears to be overblown.

 

"At first we were a bit apprehensive, but then we read lots of reports that said it was safe to go, and when we arrived we were so glad we had come," she said.

 

"You really couldn't see any damage because things had been repaired so quickly. The only evidence was the brand new varnish everywhere. All the people really wanted to put it behind them and get on with life."

[limbo]

Hundreds of people killed in Kao Lak, that's a joke isn't it?

How about 5.000+ just there.

 

It's disgusting how the Thai government focusses everything on Phuket and Kao Lak, Phi Phi and other parts in Thailand aren't mentioned and not much is happeneing.

 

At the end of the day, it's money that talks, once more. Very sad.

[Guest]

limbo said:

Hundreds of people killed in Kao Lak, that's a joke isn't it?

How about 5.000+ just there.

 

It's disgusting how the Thai government focusses everything on Phuket and Kao Lak, Phi Phi and other parts in Thailand aren't mentioned and not much is happeneing.

 

At the end of the day, it's money that talks, once more. Very sad.

 

Absolutely mate. We were helping move the bodies at Wat Yan Yao - approx 4000 went through there on our first day, we thought we were done, but were then told another 1600 were arriving in the night. so the gov are well off here. ::

[Mentors]

The new earthquake in Sumatra will not help to bring more tourists back to Phuket.

 

But i hope, that this new earthquake will help not to make same building mistakes

again in Phuket. After the Tsunami, i heard always, mai pen rai, next 500 years it will not coming back, so we can build again near the beaches...now the new earthquake in sumatra with more as 2000 victims makes a big warning...