THAILAND TRAVEL NEWS: While the number of foreign tourists visiting Thailand may have slumped in the wake of the protracted Bangkok political protests and the travel warning issued in May by more than 40 countries, the island of Phuket is bucking the national trend with arrivals for June proving to be extremely encouraging.

While June is traditionally peak low season, 286,857 travelers passed through Phuket International Airport between June 1 and 23, threatening to surpass the 341,923 figure for the entire month of June last year, and even threatening to exceed the 374,111 tally from June 2008.

At the same time a large Scandinavian inbound tour operator is forecasting a rapid rebounding of “brand Thailand” as a travel destination, saying it has so far sold 8,000 more trips for the 2010-2011 year than for the same period last year.

Christian Clemenets, chief executive of TUI Nordic, said the company brought 200,000 Scandinavian tourists to Thailand in 2008-2009 and 170,000 in 2009-2010 and so far advance bookings for tourists from Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden were extremely encouraging.

Mr. Clemenets said TUI Nordic, is expecting to operate at least three weekly charter flights to Phuket and one per week to Bangkok during the high season, but there are times during the peak when up to 20 charter flights a week are landing in Phuket.

Inbound tour operator Turismo Asia is also feeling confident that brand Thailand will rebound from the tourism slump, forecasting a 15 percent increase in 2010-2011 Phuket arrivals over the same period last year.

Santi Thiengthan, Turismo Asia’s Phuket manager, said, “Scandinavians know Phuket is a different place to Bangkok and have not been deterred by the problems in the capital”.

While hotel occupancy rates on the island hover around 30 percent, many tourism operators begrudgingly admit that, all things considered, June is proving to be not as bad as it could be.

With July traditionally seeing an increase in inbound foreign tourist arrivals, tourism operators across Phuket are holding their breath and waiting to see if this year follows the trend of previous years.

By John Le Fevre

Thailand Travel News for June 28, 2010