Phuket Beaches to Gain 'Special Tourism Zones'
By NNT news release Tuesday, February 10, 2015
PHUKET: Phuket yesterday held a meeting on assisting locals that were affected by the province's beach reorganisation campaign, which involves designating these areas as special tourism zones.
According to Provincial Governor Nisit Jansomwong, these special zones will prohibit tourists from smoking or eating on the beach.
However, the designated areas will also allow tourists to temporarily set up their own beach equipment or hire them out.
Governor Nisit explained that prior to the campaign, beachside vendors illegally claimed ownership over beach territory and set up permanent umbrella camps for rent, thereby creating a monopoly on beach equipment.
He said that affected vendors can still provide umbrella rental services to beach-goers. However, he stressed that vendors are not allowed to claim ownership over public property.
The governor revealed that these special areas will be marked, and a public relations campaign will notify tourists of their boundaries.
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Comments
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What? So a zone where tourists cannot smoke or eat. Does that mean another zone where they can? This Governor is rivaling Tony Abbott.
Posted by
FrankieV
on
February 10, 2015 14:50
Did I oversleep? Is it April 1st again? Tourist can start renting out their beach chairs & umbrellas... No work permit needed. NO company... Thailand is becoming walhalla...
Posted by
phuketgreed
on
February 10, 2015 14:59
No eating in the zones? Why? Some tourists like to spend all day on the beach, how can they do this if they can't eat on the beach? If it's related to rubbish on the beach, I think if rubbish bins were provided, the majority of tourists would use them. This is a very strange prohibition.
Posted by
Baffled
on
February 10, 2015 15:24
My husband and I have visited Patong many times over the years and we have another holiday booked for April. If these beach rules continue to 'control' how tourists spend their time on the beach, this may be very well be our last trip.
Posted by
Baffled
on
February 10, 2015 15:28
here we go again....You need to be a rocket scientist to figure out what you can and can't do on the beach and where...every plane heading toward to Phuket will need to provide it's passengers the "Beach Booklet" for everyone to study before landing. Once here, each passenger will have to take an exam, handled by immigration to ensure that they fully understand the rules and accept the penalties if they break the rules.
It's amazing what a simple thing like going to the beach on your holiday has come to. Only in Thailand could something be made as difficult as this...as the officials stand by scratching their heads wondering why no one is coming here anymore
Posted by
sky
on
February 10, 2015 15:44
Slowly this strange ideas are killing the tourism industry of Phuket.
Why doesnt anyone in power care to find out what the tourists realy want?
I would never again return for holiday to a country where the authorities forbids me to eat at the beach.
This is like having a hotel but not allowing your guests to use beds, to eat at the room, to use their own phones and to force them to walk on cracked glass at the floor.
Who will return to a hotel like that??
Just forget about attracting quality tourists with all this strange rules!
Sadly, it looks like it will be to late before thai people realize...
Posted by
PhuketFriendly
on
February 10, 2015 16:28
It would be easy to say the "authorities have lost the plot".
There is no plot or any cohesive sort of plan. The authorities drift from one version of cloud cuckoo-land to another, making themselves the laughing stock of the world.
Meanwhile any little credibility that Phuket has or had as a tourist destination, has long gone up in smoke. Indeed you wonder what the authorities are smoking!
Posted by
Logic
on
February 10, 2015 17:10
No smoking on the beach? Fine. Visitors will just pop inside a nearby restaurant or bar where the no smoking ban is widely not enforced or ignored. No eating? I get it. The Governor is going for the World's first Healthy Tourist Zones. Smoke free and compulsory dieting! Amazing Phuket!!
Posted by
Alan
on
February 10, 2015 17:24
Unlike my chronically complaining and persistently pessimistic expatriate cohorts, I am happy to see that the local authorities are continuing their attempts to fine tune the beach clean up effort and look for ways to make it work for everyone. This is a huge change overall - lets give then a little time to work out the bugs. The belligerent bellyaching by small time know-it-alls benefits no one.
Posted by
matt
on
February 10, 2015 17:58
@ matt
All they are trying to do is to find a way for the vendors to be once again allowed to rip off the tourists.
No eating zone - expect to see a vendor-controlled zone where you CAN eat.
Result ?
No more BYO food, forced to buy it off the vendors if you want to eat it on the beach.
Make a zone where vendors are not allowed as uncomfortable as possible for tourists, i.e. no eating or smoking and hopefully they will gravitate towards the zones where vendors aplenty.
You think I'm full of it ? Just wait and see when they let us know what the other, conveniently as of yet undeclared zones will be.
The Army's orders were very clear and unambiguous. NO commercial activity allowed on the beaches. Ever since authorities have come up with ideas defying all logic and common sense to squeeze the vendors back in.
Interestingly enough - the most violent group of beach "vendors", the Jet-Ski operators, neither had to leave nor have they had to stop their scams either.
Spend a few more years with your rose tinted glasses on watching the show and perhaps in a few years the reality will start to sink in at your end too.
Have a nice day.
Posted by
Herbert
on
February 10, 2015 18:18
In my country (Im from north Europe), everyone who wants to book at holiday ticket to Phuket, gets the information from travel agencies that there is no longer any beach chairs on the beaches of Phuket. The information is provided in a negative way.
Now the travel agencies also have to inform the ones that are thinking about to come here that also eating on the beaches of Phuket is forbiden.
Why not just forbid everyone from entering the beaches and let only the ones that want to rent a jet ski to go there?
Posted by
PhuketFriendly
on
February 10, 2015 18:36
The touristzones existed already. No eating? You can order food and drinks, like in the old days, at the beach boys.
Posted by
Paul
on
February 10, 2015 19:34
So foreigners can now run a chair rental business. Where can you apply for a licence?
Posted by
Sherlock
on
February 10, 2015 19:56
Nice to know that no smoking or eating zones are addressed but the jet ski issue continues to plague tourists and give phuket a bad name.
Posted by
Anonymous
on
February 10, 2015 20:26
Some would argue that my fellow Australian countrymen are often not the "quality" variety that Thailand so desperately seeks to attract.
Indications now point to less of them cluttering up the beaches from here on though, regardless of the current regulated nonsense.
The Aussie ruble is in freefall from 30bt to the $A about a year back, to under 25 today. Two years ago it was 32.
That's just gotta have tourism flow on effects.
Posted by
Hugh Jarse
on
February 10, 2015 21:20
Whew!... thank goodness, I thought they were going to go an entire week without another installment of stupid, but luckily Governor Jansomwong stepped up and delivered. I could easily picture a group of drunk teenagers sitting around trying to see who could come up with the most foolish ideas for a beach, and Phuket officials would have them beat every time. Of all the nonsense that has been proposed, the only thing holding solid is the jet-ski/power boats zones which dominate all of Patong bay. With this last stroke of foolishness, I am concerned that they might be running out of ridiculous ideas to keep us entertained in the coming weeks.
Posted by
Ed Sanders
on
February 10, 2015 22:17
@Herbert is quite correct, if you try and look at all these moves and announcements with foreign eyes, they are all totally mad. But look at them through the eyes of people trying to find ways of getting the vendors back and it all makes sense.
All these moves are designed so vendors can get back to making money again.
Come on Army, don't let them undermine your authority.
Posted by
Amazing Thailand
on
February 11, 2015 00:36
Next it will be 'you can go to the beach but you can't swim in the water'.... this is better than Monty Python's Flying Circus...... 'they live among us'!!
Posted by
DG
on
February 11, 2015 05:10
***NO EATING ZONE***
555
Eating Police will control a compliance..?
What about no cleaning a throatzones, please! as farting is not a problem here, except by expats.
Posted by
Sue
on
February 11, 2015 05:45
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No smoking on the beach? Says who?
Posted by phonus on February 10, 2015 14:29