As part of our International Tourism Management study, we are currently doing an internship at John Gray's Sea Canoe, Phuket, Thailand.

The Tsunami of 26 December 2004 obviously has a large impact on our time here in Phuket, as we arrived 3 weeks after it happened.

The Tsunami caused a great drop in tourist arrivals to Phuket, where hotels have an average occupancy rate of 80-100 %

this time of the year normally, the last months this was only 10-40%, 50% for the lucky ones. Business for John Gray Sea Canoe

is also down to 10% of what it should be. As we speak, airlines, governmental organizations and other actors in the tourism

industry are doing everything they can to bring back the tourists to Phuket.

In one of our first weeks here, we went on a trip with John, that took us all along the west coast of the Island. We saw most of the

beaches, resorts and villages that were hit by the tidal wave. We noticed that the recovering and reconstruction of beachfront

establishments differs from place to place, some places recover more quickly than others, logically because some places were

hit harder than others. Some beaches are even cleaner now than they used to be.

But what do current visitors think of the situation in Phuket, and what is the reason they are here now? These and other

Tsunami related questions are in our survey, also we asked tourists about activities they do while in Phuket.

Some of the

activities cause mayor pollution to the water and air. Also some of the beach activities are very annoying to other sun bathers.

We did these questions because we are a company that aims to teach people about the nature and create environmental awareness

also we want to find out how popular the "bad" activities are.

We spend a lot of time on the streets and beaches of Phuket, and went on our own trips, to do the survey. The result is a

trustworthy survey with very interesting outcomes.

Herman Hoven

with assistance from Marlinde Verhoeff

Jul-05

Starting my internship in July, I followed up with the survey for 3 month and finished it in the beginning of September with sum

up the figures and write down some trends.

Verena Kaiser  Sep-05