Phuket and Chiang Mai fare badly in magazine report

By David Johnson BANGKOK Phuket and Chiang Mai, two of the jewels in Thailand's tourism crown, have received "getting ugly" ratings by its National Geographic Traveler magazine. The two destinations received among the lowest ratings after the influential tourism magazine investigated 115 locations around the world. Phuket's score of 43 was particularly worrying, and has set of alarm bells among local tourism figures and the country's destination management companies (DMCs). Panu Maswongsa, vice president of the Phuket Tourism Association, was quoted by the Phuket Gazette as saying. "We have to accept the reality. We should try to improve Phuket instead of making excuses." Pornthip Samerton, managing director of DMC Destination Asia Thailand, said it was "so sad" that Phuket had deteriorated to the point it had. "Some clients don't want to go to Phuket, it's just too commercialised," she described. "There are still some nice parts of Phuket, but the big picture of Phuket is the bad effect of tourism." Destinations were given a score out of 100 by a team of 200 specialists in sustainable tourism. Those in the 54-or-below range were deemed to be "getting ugly", the worst category. In the magazine's highly unflattering appraisal of Phuket, the magazine described the island tourist Mecca as a "real hard sell". "With its current tourism climate of 'sell first, value later' things aren't going to get any better," the magazine said. Chiang Mai, which is constructing a convention centre in the hope of building on the high number of incentive and conference groups already flocking there, received a score of 51. The magazine had the following comment about Thailand's northern capital: "What was once 'clean and green' is increasingly overcrowded and polluted from too many vehicles and overuse of the Doi Suthep National Park."