Reduced fares lure tourists to tsunami-hit resorts

Travel agents are offering free airfares from Bangkok to tsunami-ravaged parts of Thailand to lure back New Zealand tourists.

The free fares, part of holiday packages on sale from today, are being provided by Thai Airways and the Tourism Authority of Thailand.

Flight Centre Asia product manager Liz Johnston says the cost of a six-night package holiday in Phuket will be reduced to $999 from Auckland, plus airport and aviation taxes and levies, a saving of $300 to $400 on deals advertised by her company yesterday.

She said free flights were offered from Bangkok to Phuket, Krabi or Trang for New Zealanders prepared to travel under specific packages between July and September.

She said conditions on Phuket, where the sea washed away waterfront hotels and restaurants on Boxing Day, were now "well up to standard" and often better than before.

"Occasionally you pass areas where they are still working, but it looks like there is just some construction happening," she said.

"The beaches are beautiful - there are even new fish that have never been seen before in Thailand being caught by the fishermen."

But although hotel occupancy rates were steadily climbing, they remained a fraction of last year's.

The Tourism Authority of Thailand's representative in Auckland, Tony Smith, said he did not have figures for tsunami-hit areas but the number of New Zealanders who visited the country in general was even higher in January and February than at the beginning of 2004.

Statistics Department returns record that 22,300 New Zealanders listed Thailand as their main overseas short-term destination in 2004, up from 16,000 the year before, but Mr Smith said these figures were light compared with tourism authority estimates.

Four of the five New Zealanders confirmed or presumed dead from the tsunami were in Thailand.