Statistiques du tourisme à Phuket

Every figure on this page comes from the provincial tourism statistics that Thailand’s Ministry of Tourism and Sports (MOTS) publishes for Phuket: the annual Q1–Q4 files for the Southern region (Phuket sheet) for 2012–2025, plus the monthly provincial situation reports that run to juillet 2026. Nothing here is estimated or modelled by us. Where MOTS leaves a cell empty, the page shows a dash.

Headlines about Phuket usually quote passenger numbers from Phuket International Airport (HKT), published by Airports of Thailand. Those count every passenger through the terminal, arriving and departing, domestic and international, residents included, and each connecting flight again. The MOTS visitor figure counts people, once, for the province; the guest-arrival figure counts check-ins. All three can be true at the same time and all three will be different. A visitor who arrives by road from Krabi never appears in the airport numbers; a Phuket resident flying to Bangkok for a weekend appears twice in the airport numbers and nowhere in the tourism statistics.

Phuket grew from 8 829 298 visitors in 2012 to 14 576 466 in 2019, the last full year before the pandemic, with hotel occupancy at 75.3% across 92 667 rooms. Foreign visitors made up 72.7% of the total that year and Chine alone supplied 3 118 901 guest arrivals — 32.2% of all foreign check-ins.

The room stock jumps from 48 241 in 2014 to 82 962 in 2015. Phuket did not build 34 721 rooms in a year: MOTS re-based its register of accommodation establishments in 2015 (the file carries the note “ปรับฐานข้อมูลปี 2558”), adding properties that had not been in the survey frame. As a result rooms, the number of establishments and guest arrivals before and after 2015 are not directly comparable, and occupancy should be read with the same caution — a larger denominator with a similar numerator. Visitor totals, which come from the demand-side survey, are less affected. The charts on this page keep the raw series and mark nothing as “adjusted”, because any adjustment would be our estimate rather than the ministry’s figure.

In 2019 the leading foreign markets by guest arrivals were Chine (3 118 901, 32.2%), Russie (909 261, 9.4%), Allemagne (638 609, 6.6%). In 2025 they are Russie (1 748 249, 17.3%), Chine (1 285 894, 12.8%), Inde (1 029 588, 10.2%). Chine peaked at 3 118 901 check-ins in 2019 and stood at 1 285 894 in 2025; Russie went from 909 261 to 1 748 249; Inde from 225 535 to 1 029 588. The top ten together account for 74.2% of foreign guest arrivals, and the remaining 28 rows of the MOTS table (including the regional aggregates “East Europe”, “Middle East” and “Africa”, and the residual “Others”) make up the rest. Each of the twenty largest markets has its own page with the annual series and monthly seasonality; the monthly page compares the ten largest side by side.

Averaged over 2013–2019, janvier carried 12.2% of the year’s foreign guest arrivals and août only 5.2%. Over 2023–2025 the curve is flatter: the busiest month, décembre, takes 10.2% and the quietest, mars, 7.5%. The reason is the mix: the winter-heavy European and Russian markets have been joined by Indian, Middle Eastern and Australian demand that peaks in the northern summer and around October, and Chinese travel that follows its own holiday calendar. In 2025 the busiest month for foreign check-ins was décembre (1 026 381) and the quietest juin (692 365). For the climate side of the same calendar — rain, sea state, sunshine by month — see the best-time-to-visit page.

Annual blocks exist for 2012–2025; 2012 comes from the comparison columns of the 2013 file and lacks the establishment count. Monthly nationality rows run 2013–2025. Monthly visitor and revenue figures are only available from 2023 onward (from the monthly situation reports), and for 2025 only through July; the rows marked preliminary are the ministry’s own “p” flag and are revised when the next report appears. MOTS publishes the annual file six to nine months after the year ends, so the 2026 annual block — and the 2026 nationality split — will not exist before mid-2027. On every refresh the parser checks thousands of arithmetic identities (4,024 on the 2026-09-05 build) (months sum to quarters, quarters to years, Thai plus foreign to total, nationalities to the foreign total) and compares the “previous year” columns against the earlier publication; as of 2026-09-05 it found zero failures and zero revisions.