Thanyapura Phuket to cater more to global sports-event market

 

The new facilities will include a 100-metre training pool with five lanes. 

Thanyapura was recently chosen as the first official training centre in Southeast Asia for swimming governing body FINA.

The upgrade will also include four more tennis courts that will increase the total number to 10, enabling the facility to hold bigger national and international tennis tournaments. 

A wellness centre with seven individual spa rooms and two large halls for yoga and mind-training programmes will be added.

In other developments, Thanyapura’s Phuket International Academy School is working towards becoming a United World College by mid-2016, while its high-performance training academies have hired three more coaches to build their programmes and send athletes to national and international competitions. 

Meanwhile, construction on 14 two-bedroom Thai-style villas is slated to commence this year, while construction of a hotel with 100 deluxe rooms is to begin next year.

“Overall revenue should increase by 40-45 per cent this year based on last year’s figure. The income will jump after the completion of new projects,” Philipp Graf von Hardenberg, president and chief executive officer, said yesterday.

He said the additional projects would be completed in three to five years and they would strengthen Thanyapura’s status as a leading sports hub of Asia.

To date, investment into the venue owned by a German and opened in 2008 has been Bt3.5 billion.

Health-conscious people from China are its top sources of business, generating 31 per cent of the facility’s room-nights in 2014. 

The other markets in the top 10 for business are Thailand, Australia, Britain, Hong Kong, Hungary, the United States, the Netherlands, Singapore and Malaysia.

In 2013, Phuket’s average occupancy rate was 49 per cent and Thanyapura’s was 52 per cent. 

In 2014, Phuket’s average occupancy and 51 per cent and Thanyapura’s 59 per cent. Graf von Hardenberg said the facility’s goal was to have an average rate of 67 per cent in 2015.

He said that from now until 2017, Thanyapura had 25 international, 15 national and 10 local events planned that would attracts thousands of athletes, support staff and spectators.

Among the events planned for 2015 and 2016 are the first international “Swim around the Island” competition and national and international tennis events.

Thanyapura is talking with potential investors about developing a similar facility in Chiang Mai.