Hotel occupancy rate in Chiang Mai down 30%

Hotels in Chiang Mai saw the average occupancy rate decline by 30% over a three-day period of severe floods covering Oct 4-6, which heavily impacted 1,500-2,000 rooms in the province.
La-iad Bungsrithong, board advisor for the Thai Hotels Association, said the situation has been gradually improving since Monday as many hotels in the affected areas had begun to clean up their properties once the floodwaters began to recede.
Over the past weekend, floodwaters rose rapidly, while water from the Ping River reached various areas in the central part of the province, particularly affecting most of the hotels on Changklan Road and alongside the Ping River. However, 2,000 hotel rooms on Nimmanhaemin Road and 1,500 rooms in the old town area remained intact.
Prior to the incident, Mrs La-iad said hotel operators in Chiang Mai had posted a strong occupancy rate of 75% during the first week of October, thanks to China’s Golden Week holiday.
However, the average occupancy saw a 30% decrease as almost 100% of local guests cancelled their trips due to the inconvenience caused to transportation in the province.
“Hotels on the outskirts were forced to temporarily close, as well as seven five-star hotels on Changklan Road that had to relocate their guests to another hotels in unaffected areas. Some of them, especially those situated on the river bank, will require up to two months to restore their properties due to the damage,” she said.
Many small hotels in the Nimmanhaemin area and the old town area had been indirectly impacted as the floodwaters had blocked the main transportation routes in the city centre.
She said even though Chiang Mai International Airport has been operating as usual, guests who continued to visit the province were mostly foreigners, as they had already planned their trips and their flights had not been cancelled.
In terms of losses, she said most five-star hotels had not been particularly affected as they are covered by insurance policies and would be compensated for the damage to their properties and revenue losses during the period when they were forced to close.
Mrs La-iad said the tourism situation should return to normal within 5-7 days and is expected to pick up strongly during the cool season, as the province remains a popular destination among local guests during the high season.
“There’s no need to give a huge discount or offer promotional prices to lure local guests back, as the incident was temporary. We’d like the government to focus more on rehabilitation of the public sector. If local communities can recover faster, the tourism industry will eventually come back as well,” she said.