PHUKET: Soon after his arrival, Phuket Governor Maitree Inthusud called for accuracy in dealing with numbers relating to Phuket tourism.

There have been some wildly inflated figures bandied about. Bank forward-planning units and even people in tourism have been known to pick the highest figure.

Just last week, a Government minister predicted that 20 million tourists would flock to the Andaman region because of new government initiatives.

In your dreams, we can say. In your dreams.

While computing the precise number of tourists who visit Phuket is an inexact science, the number of passengers who flow through Phuket International Airport provides a fair approximation.

The airport's carrying capacity also sets an upward limit on the number of arrivals. Although some people come by bus and on cruise liners, those numbers are much smaller.

Latest figures for October show a tally of 791,364 arrivals and departures through Phuket airport, up 11.4 percent on the same period last year.

That takes the total of passengers for the year through Phuket airport to 7,757,042, on course for the 9.3 million that has been forecast by year's end.

But that figure is for arrivals and departures. So to gain an idea of how many visitors Phuket has had for the year so far, the total number needs to be cut in half.

Approximately 3.87 million people have arrived on Phuket by air so far this year.

Because there are times of the year when overseas arrivals outnumber domestic arrivals, and vice versa, the number of overseas tourists can be calculated by cutting the arrivals tally in two.

So that's about 1.93 million overseas arrivals on Phuket so far this year. A far cry from 20 million.

Overseas passenger numbers rose by 17.91 percent in October, with domestic numbers up by 11.15 percent.