Phuket: New beach destination

Patong Beach, 10 years ago

About 20 years ago, Phuket had just made its mark on the tourism map as a new beach destination. It had everything necessary to mark it out as an up-and-coming island, though with a rudimentary infrastructure and only a handful of big hotels.

Among these were the Pansea Hotel (now called The Chedi), Club Med and Phuket Yacht Club. “I don’t know why, but it seems the French were the first to recognise the island’s potential – all three hotels were run by French companies,” says Khun Maitree.

It may be hard to imagine now, but in those days Phuket was much more rural. Take Kata beach for example. If you crossed the road from Club Med you found yourself standing in rice fields. Getting to Kamala Beach from any direction meant jolting along a rough track through rubber plantations.

Patong was a quiet little village. Indeed, if you went to any of the beaches in those days, it felt as if you had your own private strip of powdery white sand.

“In those days, we already had some tourists from Europe. The three hotels did a good job of promoting Phuket to the outside world. Over the past 15 years, local groups such as the Kata-Karon Club, the Patong Club and the PTA have also promoted Phuket to overseas tourists,” says Khun Maitree.

Good times, bad times

Kata Noi Beach, 10 years ago

1987: The big boost to Phuket’s fortunes came in 1987-88 with the highly successful “Visit Thailand Year” promotion by the Tourism Authority of Thailand. As a result of this, growing numbers of tourists who visited Bangkok also headed for Phuket. The campaign put the island firmly on the tourist map.

1991: The first Gulf War brought tourism to an abrupt halt, and visitor numbers rose again only around 1993. In 1994 the island had a very good year and numbers kept rising until 1997, the year of the Asian Economic Crash.

1997: While most businesses in Thailand suffered badly from the Crash, Phuket benefited massively from the fall in the baht which, at one point, halved in value. This was the real turning point for the island. The baht was on the floor, Phuket was very cheap and tourists could not get enough of it.
“Phuket hotels were so busy that they didn’t have enough rooms to handle all the guests. This opened the door for Khao Lak and Krabi. These two newer destinations started building more hotels because they could see that they could benefit from the overflow from Phuket,” Khun Maitree explains.

Karon Beach, 10 years ago

2000: In this year and the ones following, Phuket was rocked by a series of problems – Sars, avian flu, the horror of September 11 in the US, the war in Afghanistan, the massive Bali bombing and finally, at the end of 2004, the Asian Tsunami.

But the news was not all bad, says Khun Maitree. “The island received more foreign investment from everywhere around 1999 and 2000. Investors came because the baht was still cheap,” he explains.

2005-today: After the tsunami, it took Phuket a full year to recover. “Even now, there are some markets such as the mainland Chinese and the Taiwanese who still haven’t come back in full strength, but we seem to have recovered from the tsunami pretty fast,” says Khun Maitree.

The Phuket Tourist Association

Nai Harn Beach, 10 years ago

The Phuket Tourist Association (PTA) has been in existence for about 30 years and has some 300 members, including tour companies, restaurants, dive shops and hotels.

The PTA acts as the voice of its members in dealing with problems. Khun Maitree offers an example: “When the government decided to double the entry fees for national parks and islands, our members had big problems. But I don’t think they would mind if the raise were more reasonable and if the extra revenue were used to provide better services to tourist, such as newer, cleaner toilets in all the parks,” he says.

Since he was elected president of the PTA in 2006, Khun Maitree’s top priority has been safety and security. “I put safety first, ahead of even marketing. This is because, looking back, I can see that this island has survived all sorts of problems – the tsunami, bird flu and so on – yet we don’t have a problem when it comes to marketing Phuket.
“But if it anything bad related to island security were to happen, everyone would be very seriously affected,” he says. In the 2006 PTA came up with a project to help subsidise extra policemen stationed in Phuket in the tourism high season.
The reason is that Thai police officers don’t get high salaries and those who are posted temporarily to Phuket face a cost of living in Phuket that is higher than almost anywhere else in Thailand.

Hotels such as the Holiday Inn, the Diamond Cliff, the Evason Phuket, Marina Cottage, the Merlin Beach resort and the Hilton have all chipped into a fund to provide better living conditions for such policemen. “These extra officers used to have to stay in temples and schools while on duty in Phuket because there was no police accommodation to spare. They don’t have to do that now,” he smiles.