Visitors shrug off quake but tourist officials fret

PHUKET - Foreign tourists in Thailand shrugged off the threat of another killer tsunami on Tuesday although tourism officials worried the latest major quake may slow an already fragile recovery after the December 26 disaster.

Monday night's 8.7 magnitude quake off Sumatra killed about 1,000 people on the small Indonesian island of Nias, but did not trigger a tsunami as feared.

But it came just three months after December's 9.0 magnitude quake and tsunami left about 300,000 people dead or missing across Asia, including thousands of tourists.

Although seismologists have warned of a third big quake sooner rather than later, tourists appeared prepared to take that risk in their stride.

"We still come because it's not too dangerous," Sverre Ruud, a 30-year-old Norwegian factory worker, told Reuters after he jetted into the Thai tourist island of Phuket where thousands were evacuated after Monday's quake triggered a tsunami alert.

That view was echoed by Klaus, a German tourist who was flying home to Munich at the end of his beach holiday.

"I could die anywhere. I could be killed in Switzerland if I took a vacation there," he said at Phuket airport.

"This is a nice country and I want to come back. Life has to go on."

But tourism officials fretted that potential holidaymakers may rethink the notion that the December tsunami was a one-off disaster.

"It might have some psychological impact among some guests. There have been some cancellations, but nothing significant," said Pattanapong Aikwanich, president of the Phuket Hotels Association.

December's killer wave killed nearly 5,400 people in southern Thailand, including 1,953 foreigners, and visitor numbers are still well down despite a massive marketing blitz.

Occupancy rates on Phuket, which has 32,000 rooms, were up to 40 per cent from single digits in January but still well under the 75 per cent of last March.

On Monday night, Thai disaster officials used everything from megaphones to CB radio and telephones to broadcast the tsunami alert because a planned tsunami warning system is yet to be installed.

Pattanapong faulted the government for the absence of promised 30m high warning towers equipped with sirens and flashing lights.

In Bangkok, disaster officials said the first three towers would be raised on Phuket's Patong beach by mid-April.

Pattanapong also criticised the government for lack of training and education on evacuation plans, a view echoed by other hotel officials.

"We need to do practice drills, but so far there has been nothing from the government on this," said Thammarit Chotirat, deputy manager of the Ban Boa resort on Patong beach.

Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, aware of the need to restore confidence in an industry that lures 10 million tourists annually and may lose $750 million in revenues this year, said a public warning system "would be fully ready this week".

"It will be automatically linked with all SMS, cellular phone, radio and TV networks. It will work faster," Thaksin told reporters.

Although it was one of the eight biggest earthquakes since 1900, the economic impact of Monday's tremor is expected to be minimal, and far below the cost of December's disaster.

Mamoru Nagano, senior economist at Mitsubishi Research Institute in Tokyo, estimated the tsunami in December alone would cut 2005 GDP growth by 0.8 of a percentage point in Indonesia and by 0.2 of a percentage point in Thailand.

"Farming in Java and tourism in Phuket were the most affected from the tsunami. Otherwise, financial markets were hardly affected and economies were also helped by large sums of international aid," he said, referring to the billions of dollars in reconstruction aid pledged after the tsunami.

- REUTERS