Demand from foreign buyers was little bit increase since local customer was absent. More foreign workers in Hong Kong and Singapore were return to Thai market due to Asia economic stays strong. Erawana market research shows sales in the first half of this year were 25% up year-on-year. The company wished for 5,4 billion baht sales this year rather than 4 billion baht record last year. Mr Piya, , a former Bangkok Bank executive, said Phuket market will remain for next 12-18 months but still lower than the peak of 2006 when sales were up 10 billion baht.

However it shook by 29 failed projects of the total of 168 projects due to it disturbed consumer confident who paid substantial down payment. They are unable to get refund on their villas and condos. Further it will influence the total recovery of Europeans on their financial crisis. Mr Piya said his company would launch 15 villas at Tanode 3 in the Laguna area worth 300 million baht by the end of this month. Erawana launched the five-villa Peykaa worth one million baht each earlier this year. Currently it has 20% in sales from both projects and expects to have 150-200 million baht in sales per year. Established in 2005, the company has developed 11 residential projects worth close to 1.5 billion baht in Phuket comprising more than 120 villas with prices in the range of 15-20 million baht apiece.

News by Bangkok Post

This International Business Association of Phuket (IBAP) meeting will take place at the Thai Naan Restaurant, across from Central Festival. Doors open at 6:15pm and the program start at 7:10pm. The cost of entry, including buffet dinner and complimentary drinks, is 200 baht for IBAP members and 400 baht for visitors and guests. Students aged 12 to 17 will be admitted for 100 baht.

Advance tickets for the island’s premier annual musical event, the Phuket International Blue Rock, will be on sale at the special price of just 1,000 baht per night.

News by Phuket Gazette

Piya Sosothikul, executive director of Seacon, said property sales to foreigners in Phuket were worth about 4bn baht last year, up around 25 per cent on 2009. Trends are improving, with sales expected to reach 5bn this year, he said. Due to the financial crisis in 2008, the market is not yet fully recovered. The major reason for this continued weak sales is in concern with the economic situation in Europe, particularly in UK, where large number of customers came from.

Baht currency is also a factor. The appreciation of the currency means property is becoming more expensive for foreign buyers, he said. Another factor is lack of confidence, Mr Piya added.

There are many projects on the island that people have invested in that have been delayed or remain unfinished, he said.

The foreign property market in Phuket is Thailand’s second-largest after Bangkok. Rounding out the top seven are Pattaya, Chiang Mai, Samui, Hua Hin and Krabi, respectively, he said.

Mr Piya said there were 147 property projects under development in Phuket.

Of these, 23 would be considered “super premium”, meaning they comprise villas worth at least US$2 million each. Most of them were found in Surin, Kamala and west coast areas overlooking the sea.

There are 96 projects with units costing between 5 to 60 million baht each, which are spread all over the island, Mr Piya said. There are also 28 condominium projects, he added.

News by Phuket Gazette

Central Retail Corporation (CRC) announced 5 billion baht new face of Central Festival Phuket shopping mall including the launching of its fourth floor. The renovation process started on September 2004 when the complex has opened. It will be complete on early 2011. This remake meant to recover Phuket tourism industry high growth projections in retail sector throughout Thailand.

The renovation costs about 150 million spent by 300 retail tenants to renovate their stores in this complex. Thanapon Tangkananan said government’s retail industry limited its growth between 7% and 8% for this year as the highest along these five years. Mr. Thanapon is CRC vice president for business development and former president of Thai Retailers Association.

Retail sector development drove by strong domestic consumption and exports as well as fine price of agriculture products said him. Phuket itself attracted more than 7 million foreign tourists annually which was half of the total number of foreign visitors to Thailand, he added. “Despite some negative factors, such as the political unrest that hit Bangkok earlier this year, the number of foreign tourists visiting Phuket has recovered very quickly,” Mr Thanapon said. The growth had estimated about 20% last year.

Central Festival Phuket will be launch for twice on February as “The South’s Best International Lifestyle and Shopping Destination.” Its resettlement meant to attract larger numbers of foreign tourists especially from Russia, China including Hong Kong, South Korea, and Europe. CRC executive vice president for business development Lertvit Pumipitak said its new face would support parent corporation’s leadership position in retail business of Phuket. “The renovation will increase total retail space of the shopping mall from 40,000 square meters to 53,000sqm,” he said.

This extension will operate when the fourth floor opens after it was unused for more than six years. The new fourth floor will be a health and beauty zone that will be fulfill by 20 shops. It offers total retail space for more than 4,500 sqm. The amount of tenant stores in Central Festival Phuket has increased by 15% within 30-40 launching of new outlets. It will open after the renovation had completed.

Within the renovation the company expected an increasing of customer for 20% to 25 %. The mall now absorbs between 10,000 and 15,000 customer per day. While 40% of them were foreigners said Mr. Lertvit. General manager of Central Festival Phuket Wilaiporn Pitimanaaree said the sales of retail tenants increased between 12% and 15% last year in first 10 months. The mall itself expected average sales grow by more than 20% during the last two months. It has driven by holiday season and the opening of high season. Foreigners spent twice than local customer per visit, said her.

News by Phuket Gazette

On Friday, Rawai Cable became the latest company to sign the agreement, which allows CAT to provide 4MB Internet through existing cable connections.

The other companies are Phuket Cable, PA Business Phuket, KPP Rawai and KPP Enterprise.

Furthermore, CAT’s announce their readiness to exploit the recently-launched Asia-American Gateway (AAG) Cable System.

The AAG is a 20,000km cable network connecting Asia Pacific nations with the United States. CAT is one of 19 telecommunications firms combined provides US$500mn in total funding for the AAG project. Phuket Cable signed the MOU with CAT on Thursday.

Theerapong Kusolchoo, vice president of CAT Customer Service-Southern Region, said that the service meant users could still access the Internet despite the absence of telephone lines by using modem or WiFi .

CAT is already supplying the same service in Yala, Songkhla and Pattani provinces, said Mr Theerapong, who signed the MOU on his company’s behalf.

A CAT Internet Gateway, the second in Thailand after Bangkok, is currently being installed in Songkhla.

The new Gateway means Southern Thai Internet traffic, including Phuket, will bypass the capital, increasing stability and speed, he said.

News by Phuket Gazette

The airline currently flight leaving Berlin every Monday afternoon, arriving into Phuket for Tuesday mornings.

Joachim Hunold, Air Berlin’s chief executive officer, says the additional long-haul service to Phuket “reflects their need to make the most of this market opportunity and also in order to strengthen the airline’s position in Berlin for years to come.”

In another hand, the Bangkok Post reports that Mohan Air has organized new charter flights between Teheran and Phuket for Iran’s New Year festival in March, with three flights carrying 1,300 visitors to the resort island as Phuket’s high season wanes into low.

The airline is also said planning on more direct flights to Phuket “later”, while Iran is scheduling increase their number of flight into weekly flights to Bangkok, changed from two fight into three respectively.

News by Phuket Gazette

The west coast of Phuket maybe the best representation of developments in the island. Along the coast with majestic vistas, between Karon and Patong, there is a newly completed road hiking up to a palatial construction of Centara Grand, a luxury five-star-plus resort with 262 rooms sets to open in the next high season. The 1.9 billion Baht investment reflects how promising Phuket’s future is.

Phuket has been seeing the up and down before and after tsunami and both international and Thai brands have been continuously seeing medium and long term benefits on investments in Phuket. But the night when political protest turned to become a horrible bloodshed brought a huge question mark to the continuation of those investments.

The incident severely damaged Thailand social and political stability. The image of Thailand has been changed into a destination tainted by spilled blood of civilians, soldiers, even foreigner.

On Nai Harn beach there is a magnificent resort property The Phuket Yacht Club Puravarna which is already put to the market for sale. The incident in Bangkok definitely hit the seller as property market is inevitably affected, in which situation confidence on getting expected return fades away.

Learning from the picture when Tsunami hit the region back in 2004, significant disaster took a while to unfold, and even longer to recover. Tourists who have been in Phuket when the tsunami swept the continued their stay. They did not pack up and left in a hurry. But will they come back or will others come along are completely different question. Protests started back in March 12th does not show any signs of compromise resulting in escalating level of uncertainty. People may have booked and paid their holiday for April so they may still come. But beyond that bookings may get evaporated.

Tourism facility operators may promote the fact that Phuket is far away from Bangkok, but if government fall and the country runs into chaos, offering discounts are not going to attract tourists. News reported that five star brands have already offering significant discount.

C9 managing director Bill Barnett said despite the delays, new developments continued to enter the stream, with 38 properties offering 6,231 rooms at various stages of advancement in the construction cycle. “Non-traditional product, such as hotel-managed villas and condos, now represent 34 per cent of the upcoming inventory,” Barnett said.

The research shows tourist arrivals declined 14 per cent in the first half of the year, but a combined luxury/upscale/middle-market occupancy rate of 60.4 per cent produced an average room rate of US$141 (Bt4,800).

The report also said branded hotels outperformed non-branded properties in terms of rates by 33.7 per cent, although the non-branded sector outperformed the brands on occupancy by 12.4 per cent. “Looking forward, short-term trading will focus on occupancy at the expense of long-term rate strategies,” Barnett said.

“Cash flow is a key underlying consideration in this market, with most hospitality assets largely carrying low debt ratios. Defying the trends are the high-end tier luxury properties which operate in a favorable supply-and-demand segment and budget-tier hotels that have captured changing demographics are experiencing business from price-conscious travelers.”

The report concluded Phuket’s long-term outlook remained positive with brand concentration, growing airlift and infrastructure improvements, although a recovery has effectively been written off for this year, with prospects pushed into next year instead.

News by The Nation Business – www.nationmultimedia.com

The new conference center, three times larger than any existing exhibition facility in Phuket, is expected to host one or two high profile events every month. RPM was developed by tycoon Gulu Lalvani, founder of Binatone, the world’s second largest manufacturer of digital cordless phones, who is on a mission to promote Phuket as a world class yachting hub.

PIMEX, which runs from December 4 to 7 was the first major exhibition to be held at the new RPM facility. Visitors to Phuket exceeded a record five million last year, up 11.25 per cent from 2006. Despite the troubles in Bangkok over the past few weeks, a spokesperson for RPM said Phuket had been largely unaffected and high season hotel bookings and visitors to the Island are expected to be high.

Andrew Jessop, Langham Hotels International’s vice-president for Thailand, said that the residential component of both hotels would be marketed globally and not just in Hong Kong. “Phuket has such an appeal that you’ll find a lot Europeans, people in the UK will be interested, even North America.” Mr Jessop’s previous experience at the Sheraton Grande Laguna shows that the yield at such mixed-use projects has dropped over the past five to eight years. As the Sheraton project was one of the first of its kind on the island, initially unit owners obtained as much as 20% plus per year. This high return has deteriorated in the face of higher competition from similar developments, and today investors would be doing well if they could get 10%.

A portion of these developments offer guaranteed returns ranging from 3% to 6%. While this is a fair arrangement, investors should be getting more at the better projects. “If it’s a non-branded development you are facing more challenges but hopefully with a branded company behind it, it should be able to do better,” said Mr Jessop. Langham Hotels is also looking at five other management opportunities aside from focusing on Bangkok where it would want to be as close to the Skytrain as possible. Mr Jessop also has experience in the capital, having first come to Thailand to open the Sheraton Grande Sukhumvit Hotel in 1995. “We have three brands and we have potential for each brand. So The Langham is our high-end brand, Langham Place is a cool, hip, chic brand, and Eaton is our four-star brand. We are talking to developers across all three brands because in Phuket there is a lot happening, in Bangkok too, and really Sukhumvit is where it’s all happening.”

While there is no ignoring the political turmoil in Thailand, Mr Jessop points out that Phuket has proved to be very resilient, having bounced back quite well from earlier upheavals including 9/11, the tsunami, the Bali bombings, Sars and the bird flu. “Phuket sneezes but it doesn’t seem to catch a cold,” he said. “Property prices have not really been affected over the years, which is a good thing. I think at the end of the day Phuket is such a brand name of its own, it’s almost divorced from Bangkok to a certain extent in the minds of investors. You can fly in and out of Phuket a hundred times and never go to Bangkok if you don’t want to.”

He is also optimistic about the island’s future, noting that even now, only a few of the international hotel brands are there. Among those that have yet to enter this lucrative market are Four Seasons, Ritz Carlton, Fairmont and Grand Hyatt. “We’re going to see a transition over the next 10 years from owner-operated resorts to branded international chains. I think the customer demands are changing, people’s needs are changing. In the past the guests were satisfied with a beautiful smile, a fruity drink on arrival, some exotic fruit in the room and somewhere to sit on the beach and they were happy. “I think people’s needs today are much more immediate, more refined and personal – ‘what I want, not what everyone wants’ – and that does require a little bit more work behind the scenes to make it happen. So I think we are seeing that transition now.”

In his opinion, Phuket, Bali and Samui rank in that order as the premier resorts in Asia. Phuket’s advantage is that it now has very good infrastructure and is easily accessible from Hong Kong, Singapore and other gateway cities. “Samui and Bali have a similar appeal about them whereas Phuket is slightly more cosmopolitan.” But there is a sparkle in Mr Jessop’s eyes when one mentions Krabi, where he is currently based. “It’s definitely more scenic than Phuket. Certainly the rock formations and the limestone cliffs, even as you are driving through the roads, are just fabulous.”

Written by Nina Suebsukcharoen; Featured on Bangkok Post – bangkokpost.com