Phuket under pressure as tourism growth exposes flaws in hotel sector

Phuket Gazette

 

Data from Phuket’s Provincial Administration Office shows that of the 1,295 unlicensed hotels identified in Phuket, only six have had their licenses approved. A further 1,001 are pending approval, while 288 have not yet applied.

 

PHUKET: -- According to a new report released today by hospitality consulting group C9 Hotelworks, millions of travellers who visit Phuket each year could be staying in unlicensed - and effectively illegal - hotels. The report also states that less than a quarter of the hotels in Phuket (429 out of 1,724) are currently licensed. 

This issue was brought into sharp focus late last year when former Phuket Governor Chokchai Dejamornthan announced plans for a crackdown on unlicensed hotels on the island. 

At the time, Governor Chokchai urged the travelling public not to stay in unregistered hotels. But despite a deadline of January 31, 2017 for offending hotels to become legally registered, C9 Hotelworks underscores that now, six months later, the situation remains challenged. 

 

Full story: http://www.phuketgazette.net/phuket-news/Phuket-pressure-tourism-growth-exposes-flaws-hotel/66786?desktopversion#ad-image-0

 

-- © Copyright Phuket Gazette 2017-07-19

The roar of a toothless tiger scares no one...

"License?  We don't need no stinking license!" 

 

This is disappointing news especially as, arguably, this should be an easy matter to resolve. 

 

Cutting power/water and chaining shut the doors of offending businesses would rapidly solve the problem.  Best done now ! 

How can you open a hotel without a license ? Pay taxes, employ staff, get a bank account for the business and many more questions.

Answer: TiT !

Could probably use the same bar chart for drivers licences in the hub of " nobody really gives a shit"

Looks like they forgot to include the thousands of condo rooms being sold as hotels by the night. No licences. No tax.

53 minutes ago, Deli said:

How can you open a hotel without a license ? Pay taxes, employ staff, get a bank account for the business and many more questions.

Answer: TiT !

It's Thailand.  Brown envelopes take care of all those problems. 

 

 

2 hours ago, webfact said:

At the time, Governor Chokchai urged the travelling public not to stay in unregistered hotels.

A tourist visiting your self proclaimed holiday paradise normally has not the same information about unregistered hotels as the "officials" working under your administration. Got it boy? 

It is astonishing what companies do without a license here.  Due to Thai libel laws, you cannot mention them, but some huge local businesses start new business with being licensed.     

That is one reason why there is no money for the tunnel.

Loosen up council,,,,, you will print BIG stickers & give to licensed hotels.

No sticker, the owners  cannot charge anyone who stay there................

"Without the ability to apply hotel tax to unlicensed properties, the island is being denied much needed revenue that could be reinvested into infrastructure"

 

Ahh, that makes it all clearer, it isn't about safety, or Phukets reputation, it is all about getting money into the local government beaucracy, and more to be distributed to the chosen ones I guess. 

The flaws are not within the hotel sector at all...the flaws are with the Phuket administration...too lazy and so hopelessly inept to do their jobs.

It's gobsmacking to think Phuket has been a tourist destination for nearly 3 decades and they have just over 400 licensed Hotels. While some say 'the brown envelope ' manages this it amazing how incompetent the Phuket Government has always been. 

The flip side of the coin is the endless bureaucracy. Take a restaurant license permitting to produce and sell food  which needs to be renewed yearly. 
In more than a decade the company, premises, location, key executives and shareholder did not change. Yet the municipality, not linked to nothing except Line, WhatsApp, Facebook and other social media to entertain the numerous staff poking noses and scratching everything else requests an updated extract of company papers (Department of Business Development, half a day gone), verified copies of the house register (land lord, who keeps moaning why these papers are needed again, wasting 2 hours), medical certificate of key executive (who are rarely in the restaurant as guests and never involved in the physical processing of food, another 2 hours), a drawn location map (print out of Google map is not acceptable) and then four clowns walk in and look at the place. Some ten years ago they had a chemical test set with them and wanted to swipe crockery and cutlery. We then told them that they might want to check the industrial dishwasher, which cleans all that stuff on a daily basis. Never saw such a machine and insisted on the crockery - fine with us to. 

Now you can only imagine, how many staff you would have to employ to please the authorities for a hotel license. Given the fact, that most hotels are not owned nor run by alien - go figure.

 

Get the bureaucracy to reasonable levels, facilitate llicensing to common sense things like operation, security and safety etc. and then you'll see the light at the end of tunnel. This implies that you would have to boot out 50% - 60% of those government workers as these offices no longer serve to hire and employ people who know nothing of anything to start with. How many offices are filled for the sake of employing people with almost zero background? Take the fact, that 80% of the employees are unskilled - go figure again! 

In closing, the brown envelopes help to keep friendships alive, places unlicensed and the reputation going south. Once the fact, that only 25% of the hotels are licensed, goes viral, the tour operators will look elsewhere. This, combined with AirBnB, the world's largest hotel chain without a single room or license .......... Tourism morning is dawning!