A RED-SHIRT rally on Phuket, planned for Saturday, can only hammer the island's holiday industry at the start of the high season, tourism industry leaders said today.

''The best thing is for all colors, red and yellow, to stop to give Phuket and Thailand time to breathe again,'' Methee Tanmanatragul, President of the Southern Chapter of the Thai Hotels Association, told Phuketwan today.

The rally, with a hoped-for phone in by fugitive former PM Thaksin Shinawatra, threatens to thrust Phuket back to the centre of the national political limelight.

It's a position that Phuket first occupied unwillingly last August, when yellow-shirts invaded Phuket International Airport and stopped flights arriving or departing for three days.

That plunged tourism on Phuket into a spiral from which it has yet to fully recover - and tourism leaders on the island were today keen for both red and yellow shirts to spare Phuket any more pain.

''The colors are demonstrating their power, but that just doesn't help the country,'' Khun Methee said. ''Other destinations are competing for Phuket's market.

''We have everything people want . . . except stability. It's time people stopped and thought and acted in the best interests of the country.''

The high season officially begins on November 1, the day after Saturday's scheduled red-shirt rally, although this year visitor numbers may not rise appreciably until December 1.

The red-shirts hope to attract 1000 supporters from all 14 southern provinces to a fund-raising dinner at Rajabhat University on Saturday, with the special attraction of a phone-in from Khun Thaksin.

But Phuket is a yellow-shirt stronghold. Moves are being made to have the dinner cancelled, despite support at the university for freedom of speech, regardless of color.

Maitree Narukatpichai, owner of the Hilton Phuket Arcadia Resort and Spa at Karon, Phuket's largest resort, said tourism on Phuket was yet to recover from a succession of damaging effects, the H1N1 virus scare being the latest.

''It would be better if the red-shirts did not organise political meetings in a tourism destination,'' Khun Maitree said.

''Bookings on the island are already running at 50-60 percent, which is well below what they used to be before politics came to Phuket.''

Khun Maitree said tourism from some markets had virtually disappeared since the occupation of the island's airport last August and Suvarnabhumi airport in November.

''Numbers from Korea, for example, have fallen by 50 percent,'' he said.

Phuket has long been regarded as a stronghold for both the yellow-shirt Peoples' Alliance for Democracy and the Democrat Party, which rules the governing coalition.

While many people who come to Phuket to live and work in the tourism industry are probably former supporters of Khun Thaksin, very few speak out.

After red-shirt protesters invaded the Pattaya resort where Asean leaders were to meet in April, Phuket became the peaceful destination for a summit of Asean Foreign Ministers in July.

Continuing uncertainty surrounding national politics is blamed for the loss of billions of baht in revenue on Phuket and other destinations in Thailand.