South hotels slash rates to woo more local tourists

“The promotion is about 50 per cent off normal prices. They offer such special deals to boost local guests in the low season and also substitute for fewer regular customers from abroad,” Krisada Tansakul, president of the Thai Hotels Association Southern Chapter, said last week. 

Hotels in five provinces – Phuket, Krabi, Nakhon Sri Thammarat, Surat Thani and Songkhla (mainly Hat Yai) – are cutting room rates up to 50-60 per cent from market prices.

The discounted rooms are not sold in the market directly, but offered with the Bt3,000 package that includes meals and transportation. It will be on the market until October.

The promotion is expected to generate about 20,000 customers and Bt40 billion-Bt50 billion revenue during this off-season.

The association predicts that tourism in the five major destinations and other provinces would stay sluggish throughout the low season, as foreign tourists, especially Westerners, are still cancelling their overseas travel plans due to domestic economic problems. The association has reported that average occupancy rates at hotels in Phuket in April continued dropping due to the global economic slowdown but expected a rebound in the final quarter this year. 

Phuket registered 62-per-cent occupancy in April, a 15-percentage-point drop from 74 per cent in the same month last year.