Samui enjoys tourism boom
Samui island in south Thailand is benefiting from mounting airlift, which is positively impacting on hotel occupancy levels, according to the latest research.
Key findings and forecasts are presented in C9 Hotelworks newly released Samui Hotel Market Update Mid-Year Edition 2016.
During the first six months of 2016 year-on-year international arrivals grew by 18%, as the airport handled 624,914 incoming passengers on both overseas and domestic flights.
As seen in other Thai markets, China led the pack with a 26% rise compared with the same period in 2015, while Australian visitors rose by 21%.
The passenger growth is reflected by a 10% spike in additional flights mainly from Singapore, Malaysia and domestic flights in Thailand.
Taking a look at the effect on hotel occupancy, data from hospitality benchmarking group STR reflects a sharp rise in market-wide occupancy of 7.7% from January through August, though average room rates did not experience the same impact as moved upward by just under 1%.
Looking back over the past three years, while Samui’s hotel performance slumped in 2014 during Thailand’s political crisis, an upward trajectory has been sustained for nearly two years.
Commenting on developments in the tourism sector C9 Hotelworks managing director, Bill Barnett, said: “We are closely looking at the current EIA (Environmental Impact Assessment) process for Samui International Airport to increase daily capacity from 50 to 75 flights.”
“This could kick off by 2017 with a phased approach, and would generate a substantial inducement to tourism numbers.”
Meanwhile, Bangkok Airways is planning to further expand China airlift, adding daily scheduled flights from Guangzhou and three-times weekly charter flights from Chongqing by the end of 2016.
Additionally frequencies between Samui and Phuket will be added in the fourth quarter of this year.
Closing out C9’s research on Samui hotel industry, Barnett said: “Bangkok Airway’s plan to extend its cover of Mainland China to accommodate demand in tour series, we forecast a growing supply share of lower-tier hotels, which are already becoming more visible in the pipeline projects.
However, TTR Weekly observed there is still considerable criticism that air fares to Samui are higher than to other Thai beach destinations. The Singapore-Samui and Singapore-Phuket routes are often compared. Phuket is served by low-cost airlines and this lowers the fares considerably when compared to flights to Samui, where Bangkok Airways dominates supply.
Phuket-based C9 Hotelworks is led by founder and managing director, Bill Barnett, who has accumulated over 30 years’ experience in the Asian hospitality and real estate sectors.
His company releases tourism and hospitality related forecasts and studies on destinations across ASEAN.
(Source: C9 Hotelworks )
