Phuket remaintains a top spot for Swedish travellers according to reports from Swedish tour organizers.
In an interview with Star Tours, Thai daily Poochatgarn writes that this operator alone brought some 30,000 Scandinavian tourists to Phuket during the last high season from November 2001 until April this year.
Star Tours’ Phuket bookings for this season are already 15 percent higher than for the 2001/2002 period.
While total tourism to Phuket grew by just over ten percent between 2000 and 2001 to 3 275,669 visitors, the number of hotel rooms grew even faster by a whopping 36.71 percent to 26,759 rooms during the same period.
People stay longer too. Average stay last year grew to 3.5 days from 3.3 days in 2000.
The only constraint is availability of airline seats on the feeder route Bangkok-Phuket. However, Bangkok Airways will start nonstop flights to Phuket from Bangkok this November and add several thousand seats per week to those provided by Thai Airways over 40,000 weekly seats and Air Andaman.
But no big boost will come about without an expansion of Phuket Airport. Talks have been held to raise money for such a project but so far without success.
