OPINION

Just pour concrete and wait for guests is the new mantra

Theme holidays buried in concrete and wall-to-wall hotels sharing shrinking beaches await visitors to Vietnam’s scenic Phu Quoc. Are there lessons to be learned from Phuket's overtourism and rampant development?

by Vijay Verghese

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Will massive tourism hotel developments (above) turn Vietnam's charms and historic appeal to bland mush as thematic stays take the lead? And will supply-driven development work on a pristine island lacking infrastructure and valid tourism numbers? Phuket's history and current woes may offer some answers.

IN THE mid-Eighties I was in Phuket attending a Thai Airways Marketing Activity Plan meet with all its top international agents and managers present. The lively meet marked an emerging  tourism renaissance spearheaded by the Harvard educated Chatrachai Bunya-Ananta, the mercurial president of Thai Airways, and the flamboyant Captain Jothin Pamon-Montri, Senior VP Flight Ops, who had vision and charm enough to magic up anything and feed it to a press that lapped it up.

The government was looking ahead to its ‘Visit Thailand Year’ in 1987 too. The stars seemed aligned. Some of us were driven to a promontory looking down at a sleepy beach that arced out below us with unruffled white sands lined by casuarina trees. “This is the future,” our host proclaimed, “…you are looking at Patong Beach.” It was hard to imagine much at the time but the view was splendid. This was Thai tourism’s finest moment — the planned development of an idyllic island that would pull in over 10m foreign tourists by 2025. Later, at The Royal Phuket Yacht Club (now The Nai Harn) at the southern tip of the island, Chatchai mused aloud about the possibility of frying eggs for business passengers on the serving trolley. No idea was too wild or too daft. Everything was possible.

Today, Phuket, the jewel in the crown, is suffering a “tourism recession”. Simply put, the traveller numbers are dropping with domestic visitors preoccupied with  rising living costs and international traffic put off by high prices and the Middle East ructions. Infrastructure is reasonable but arterial roads are choked with traffic and transport remains an Achilles heel with taxi monopolies, mafia intimidation of private companies and ride hailing services like Grab and Bolt and the absence of public transport. Beach hopping is laboursome and expensive, and hugely problematic late at night.

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According to a recent report in The Nation, the island’s woes are compounded by a drop in Chinese visitors, a “weak local economy… and household debt” further aggravated by revenue “leakage” whereby an estimated 30% of tourism earning is siphoned off by foreign owners and companies rather than reinvested locally. This, at a time when Thailand’s tourism footfall is yet to catch up with the 40 million 2019 pre-pandemic level.

{find world class facilities with a faux-Mediterranean vibe, and some world-class boredom arising from the banality of the whole proposition...

Off the southern coast of Vietnam, Phu Quoc is now making a bid to be the next Phuket of Southeast Asia. It attracted just under 2m international visitors in 2025 across an island that is roughly 575sq km in area, about the same size as Phuket. While blessed with fine beaches and an attractive, but fading, rustic idyll, the Vietnamese tropical bolthole is lacking in infrastructure and connectivity. While the airport is being expanded to manage 8m passengers, developers Sun and Vina are building massive tourism  enclaves where it is assumed conference-goers will rush to enjoy world class facilities cooped up in concrete with a faux-Mediterranean vibe and some world-class boredom arising from the banality of the whole proposition.

For travellers it is case of caveat emptor. Already at some international resorts — built to a high standard and undeniably comfortable —  the feel is sterile and far from the image of Vietnam that is the primary lure for travel to the country. A Bill Bensley-designed JW Marriott themed after some imaginary French university takes fantasy to bizarre lengths with its architecture and roleplay. Here, the GM poses as the headmaster. You may as well import school dinner restaurants too, as was once fashionable in the UK. But where does this leave Vietnam? Some will argue the Bensley vision is simply a fun adult Disneyland no different from, say, the Atlantis in Dubai or Sanya. They would have a point. Others will argue that the entire ‘faculty’ — and the designers — deserve a good spanking to insert some common sense into the mix.  

In Phu Quoc, lifestyles are changing, price-gouging is not unknown, waste management issues are mounting, farms are disappearing and that rustic away-from-the-big-city feel will be gone in the blink of an eye unless some serious town and tourism planning is envisioned and enforced.

Sun Group has already launched its Sun PhuQuoc Airways — a welcome, if brave, move if managed well — ‘attractions’ have multiplied from cable car rides to themed shows. It is now a case of oversupply awaiting demand as ‘ghost buildings’ multiply. Consider the canals of Grand World by Vinpearl with its Venice show and laser spectacle, or the seafront Sunset Town (from Sun Group) with a Bavaria Bistro and nightly fireworks. A quick look towards Phuket might encourage someone to step on the brakes. Empty ghost towns have plagued other tourism zones too in Sanya, Hua Hin and elsewhere. The problem is, development is usually behind the curve and by the time massive projects mature, the arrivals wave has passed to a new area with ever more gaudy and cheaper titillation.

The hideaway eco-friendly Mango Bay eco resort near Ong Lang Beach a half hour north of the airport operates serenely sans TVs, telephones or aircons. It is a perfect example of what the island has to offer at one extreme of the waste-not compost-everything solar-power spectrum. Unfortunately it has been overtaken by the ersatz Euro din much favoured by private developers favouring quantity over quality.

The question is, can a balance be found somewhere between these extremes, offering comfort while presenting the best of Vietnam with an emphasis on eco-tourism and the protection of fragile marine zones like the threatened An Thoi archipelago in the south? Local groups like the ‘clean and green’ Phu Quoc Sach va Xanh are already fighting the effects of overtourism with beach clean-ups, advocating the elimination of plastic, and upcycling waste. Travellers too can do their bit by being aware and minimising their footprint.