rebuilding Phuket

[Coolhand]

From yesterday's Times:

ON AN almost empty flight from Bangkok to Phuket this summer I sat next to a UK tour operator who told me that he was ashamed that package holidays to the Thai island had been selling on the internet for only £350 a week, including flights.
“This kind of crazy discounting doesn’t do anyone any good,” he said. “Cheap holidays only bring in cheap people. Absolutely nobody benefits — certainly not the Thai people, the hoteliers, or the airlines. I knew this would happen, but it’s still shameful.”

On an eight-day tour of Thailand’s tsunami-hit south- west coast, I was astounded by the amount of new construction, from small hotels with fewer than 50 rooms to large chain hotels of more than 200 rooms and apartment blocks. Add on the rebuilds, and damage-fixing from the disaster, and it was hard to dodge the bulldozers.

There are those who prefer the facilities of a large hotel, but I confined my visit to new, more intimate properties in hideaway locations. What I found was a streamlined style of tropical luxury with fewer Thai flourishes — statues of Buddha, jewelled silks and curvy pavilions — and a more minimalist approach using natural materials, replacing marble with soapstone baths, sunk in Zen-like pebble gardens.

Apart from my first stop at the new Arahmas Resort & Spa on Naiyang Beach, ten minutes from Phuket airport, I managed to avoid construction sites. Here, my beach-front villa with private pool was lovely, but a large block of half-built serviced apartments next door defeated a lie-in. With hundreds of workers streaming past my pool, a skinny dip was not an option.

Naturally I heard tragic stories of loved ones lost from staff in the hotels, but that famed Thai smile was still there and people seemed more eager to please than ever. It’s not my cuppa, but one night I visited Patong, centre of Phuket’s night scene. All the shops, restaurants and girlie bars have been rebuilt and the only tsunami evidence was a solitary stallholder selling Wave of Destruction DVDs.

Such a disaster is also going to bring its share of good-luck stories, such as that of Anthony Lark, general manager of Trisara, Phuket’s stylish new luxury resort of 24 private pool villas. The Aman-style property, which opened only two months before the tsunami, was already attracting London society and celebrities.

Lark said that he was breakfasting with guests on Boxing Day when a friend radioed from his yacht to warn him to clear the beach and pool terrace because a giant wave was coming. “I could see a group of toddlers paddling in the shallows. If our pool attendants hadn’t acted fast to clear the area, we would have lost them as well as many others,” he told me.

The tsunami’s worst effects are still evident north of Phuket on the mainland at Khao Lak, which bore the brunt of the tragedy in Thailand, with more than 1,000 deaths. Hotels are rebuilding fast, but no more than half of the resort’s 4,500 rooms are expected to be ready by the end of this month.



Spare a thought for Andrew and Kate Kemp, a pair of British Hong Kong expats, who scoured the world for the ideal hotel site and planned to open the Sarojin, a 54-room five-star resort on a dreamscape Khao Lak beach on December 29 last year. They kept on all staff to help in the rebuilding and the hotel finally opened on October 1.

The beach is 10km (six miles) of white-sand beauty, the equal of anything in the Caribbean or Indian Ocean, with no tsunami debris or devastation. Sarojin, which looks set to be a stunner, has the 250-room Le Meridien, which reopened on October 15, as its only neighbour. Sadly, the drive to the beach is a grisly reminder of the tragedy, with many boarded-up businesses and abandoned hotels. It’s more ghost town than war zone, but still depressing.

So, is it the right time to go back? If you choose any of our hotels, the answer is “yes”. Anywhere else and it pays to grill your tour operator or travel agent about construction work. Nobody wants a piledriver in paradise or a hard-hat zone around the pool.

http://travel.timesonline.co.uk/arti...6716_1,00.html

[the bigboy]

Ofcourse The Tour Operater Don't Like It He's Not Making Big Loads Of Money Anymore.
But When I Can Get Cheap Flights To Los Is'ts Fantastic The More I Can Spend On The Beauties Overthere I Don't Care If A Big Airline Company Lowers Their Prizes Because It Is Tricky They Only Sell A Few Seats For That Prize. I Have To Fly This Trip 4 Days Later To Get The Cheap Ticket I Don't Care.
Why Low - Mid - High Season Prices.
1 Prize For The Whole Year And Including All The Taxes And Extra's
So You Don't Get Surprised.
Now I Got A Ticket For €455 And €192 Extra's And Taxes Thats Almost 50% Of My Ticket Prize Extra B*llsh*t

[stevem]

Originally Posted by Coolhand

ON AN almost empty flight from Bangkok to Phuket this summer I sat next to a UK tour operator who told me that he was ashamed that package holidays to the Thai island had been selling on the internet for only £350 a week, including flights.
“This kind of crazy discounting doesn’t do anyone any good,”

He is right to a certain degree. Obviously these almost unbelieveably cheap deals do indeed attract folks that normally would not travel to Thailand or anywhere in Asia for that matter. Dont get me wrong this is a good thing that they are making the trip.

It is also something that I have been saying for months, that whilst the arrival figures maybe up for Phuket Airport (and that is all the government seems to be concerned about), these folks on these packages dont really contribute much else to the local economy.

They have all inclusive deals at the hotel/resort, and they eat, drink and sleep there. They can be seen lazing by the hotel pool, walking up and down Bangla to allow their evening meal to go down, and then return to their rooms. You can even see them walking up and down Soi SeaDragon, but heaven forbid if they were to go inside a bar and have a drink!!!!

Call me synical, but I call it as I see it.