Phuket has welcomed more than 1.7 million visitors during the first five months of this year, generating over 26 billion baht in revenue for the resort island.

The Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT)'s Phuket Office said on Tuesday that hotel rooms in Phuket used to be 75% booked before the pandemic. But the hotel reservation rate declined to 19.47% in 2020 and 7.75% in 2021.

Since the launch of the Rao Tiew Duay Kan (We Travel Together) tourism campaign, the proportion of domestic tourists rose to 80% of the total last year, the same level as foreign tourists prior to the pandemic in 2019, according to the TAT.

More than 200,000 foreign tourists had visited Phuket with the launch of the Sandbox scheme from July to December last year.

From the beginning of this year to May 31, around 1.73 million tourists visited the island, of them 132,472 were domestic travellers.

The island has earned 26.5 billion baht from tourist spending, of which 14.4 billion baht came from Thais, indicating an increase in the number of domestic tourists lately.