Surat Thani to host ‘Samui Festival’ every year to boost tourism

The success of this year’s ‘Samui Festival’ has prompted the the Surat Thani province (in Thailand) to make the festival an annual event. This year’s ‘Samui festival’ attracted large numbers of tourist and local visitors.

The province’s governor, Wongsiri Promchana said the tourism receipt from this year’s Samui Festival was 100 million baht (RM11 million). He expected the turnover from the event to keep on increasing in the years to come.

The festival held over two days last month succeeded in showcasing other attractions in the province, besides Koh Samui and the Fullmoon party associated with the popular island, he said.

According to the governor, Surat Thani received two million visitors last year, and this translated to 65 billion baht (RM7.6 billion) in the province’s coffers, out of the province’s total Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of 180 billion baht (RM21 billion).

He forecasted the total number of visitors to the province this year would increase to 2.5 million, mainly from China, bringing 100 billion baht (RM11 billion) to its GDP.

Currently, he said, there were about 10,000 tourists from China in the province, with 154 charted flights have been scheduled from the country this month alone, alongside 36 regular flights from the province’s and the Samui airport.

Besides that, he said Surat Thani, especially Koh Samui also received many Malaysian tourists who likeed to travel overland in a convoy of motorcycles or car, as well as via air.

In a recent interview with Bernama, he said the province had other attractions for tourists other than the islands such as the beautiful lake at Cheow Lan dam (Ratchaprapa dam), cultural wonders and historical sites.