Phuket Losing $10m/day

[george]

Phuket losing $10m/day

PHUKET: -- Thailand's glittering tourist island of Phuket is losing $10-million per day during the current peak season in the wake of killer tsunamis, its chief tourism official said on Wednesday.

Beaches normally packed with sun-worshipping tourists escaping the northern winter are practically deserted, and Phuket � a massive money-spinner for the kingdom's tourism industry � has just 20 percent hotel occupancy.

The numbers will get worse before they get better, especially with European travellers from countries that suffered hundreds or even thousands of casualties from the waves, according to Pattanapong Aikwanich, president of the Phuket Tourism Association.

"It will be very, very serious if we cannot get the tourists coming back to Phuket," Pattanapong told AFP in an interview on Patong beach, where a clean-up campaign was mounted on Wednesday.

Tourism accounts for some six percent of Thailand's gross domestic product. Phuket alone earns 72-billion baht ($1.84-billion) in tourism revenue per year, or about 200-million baht per day, he said.

"But during this period (between Christmas and January 10) we make double. We are losing about 400-million baht per day."

Most of the visitors now are rescue and relief workers, outside volunteers, and hundreds of diplomatic staff and forensic personnel tending to the needs of the thousands of foreign tourists who were on Phuket at the time of the disaster.

"It's slowing down. We have about 20 percent occupancy all over the island... and when these people go back, we will have even less," he said.

Public relations nightmare

The heavy losses are expected to last through March, until many of the affected properties can rebuilt enough to reopen. But the damage in the eyes of the international community may take many more months to repair.

Many of the most dramatic video images of the waves crashing into resorts and towns were taken by tourists on Phuket's west coast.

"I think the worst damage to Phuket is the public relations, the news that has gone all over the world. When people get that message they imagine the worst," Pattanapong said.

The clean-up is well underway on Patong beach

About 20 percent of Phuket's 36�000 hotel rooms were affected by the disaster � most of them not damaged by the water but taken off line because water, sanitation, and electricity systems were in basements or buried underground, where they were damaged.

Local authorities were scrambling to assure foreign governments and travel agencies that Phuket will bounce back quickly.

"We have to prove to the world we are clean, we are safe, we have no disease, and we are getting a system that can warn the tourists if this kind of thing happens again," he said.

Jerry Heringa from the Netherlands, a manager of the Impiana Phuket Cabana Resort on Patong beach, said it will take nine months to rebuild and open the flooded 76-room resort.

The masses of tourists to which Phuket has grown accustomed may not return until the following Christmas and New Year season, he added. "It's the image people have. They see total destruction and when they see that, they stay away," he said.

At the nearby Casuarina Garden Resort some 300 metres from Patong's coastline, staffers were cleaning up debris and assessing the damage.

Calm returns to Phuket's main beach

"We don't know if the government will help us or not," assistant manager Weerot Kumban told AFP, adding that it would take up to six months to reopen. "All staff and guests here were safe, but there is no money for the staff unless there is government assistance."

Unemployment to soar

Nearly 20�000 people have already lost their jobs but the government has promised to find jobs for displaced workers and offer relief measures to businesses, the Nation newspaper reported on Wednesday.

Many bar and shop owners were doing their best to repair their businesses. At the Cat Bar, a block off Patong's main beachside strip, three monks chanted blessings for the bar and received offerings from its owners and staff.

Two metres off the ground and pinned to a bar pillar was a cracked plastic clock, its face discoloured by a watermark and its hands frozen at 10.24am � the time when the water from the second and third waves reached the height of the clock.

-- AFP 2005-01-07

[Erwin1011]

Phuket losing $10m/day

PHUKET:

Many bar and shop owners were doing their best to repair their businesses. At the Cat Bar, a block off Patong's main beachside strip, three monks chanted blessings for the bar and received offerings from its owners and staff.

Two metres off the ground and pinned to a bar pillar was a cracked plastic clock, its face discoloured by a watermark and its hands frozen at 10.24am � the time when the water from the second and third waves reached the height of the clock.

-- AFP 2005-01-07

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I hope they keep that clock there and make a kind of shrine out of it in remembrance.