Thai hotels fear room shortage for tsunami memorials

BANGKOK - The Thai government has invited 13,000 people, including Australians, to an all expenses-paid tsunami commemoration, but the country's hoteliers aren't sure they'll have enough rooms available.

A set of memorial services are to be held in tsunami-hit areas, including the resort island of Phuket, on December 26 -- the first anniversary of the disaster.

Those invited from many countries include injured survivors as well as relatives of the dead.

The timing coincides with the peak season for Thai tourism, which has tried hard to rebuild and bounce back since the tsunami.

President of the Phuket Tourist Association, Pattanapong Aikwanich, said today many hotel rooms had already been booked by holidaymakers.

"The period between Christmas and the New Year is when tourists start coming back, and the hotels have an allotment system with travel agents who have already booked many rooms," he said.

Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra this week promised that the government would pay air fare and accommodation bills in a three-or four-star hotel for the invitees.

But full details on this magnanimous gesture remain unclear.

About 10,000 foreigners - including more than 100 Australians - are expected to be on the list of invitees and Phuket has only 27,000 hotel rooms.

"Even if such a large number of rooms could be found, the hotels have no guarantee that the guests would actually turn up and stay in them," said Pattanapong.

He added: "We need to discuss this further, with both the government and the travel agencies."

The Thai government plans to send out letters at the end of this month, offering free two-day trips to the southern provinces of Phuket and Phang Nga to one relative of each of the 2,400 foreigners who died in last year's tsunami.

Invitations will also go to all of the 7,000 foreign tourists who were injured.

And the cost of bringing all of them to Thailand to attend the anniversary ceremony on December 26 to 27 is expected to exceed A$US5 million ($5.51 million).

About half of the more than 5,000 tsunami victims who died in Thailand are believed to be foreign holidaymakers, but only 1,700 bodies have so far been positively identified.

The government's offer also extends to affected Thais from elsewhere in the country.

- AAP