Yeoh Siew Hoon spends the weekend in Phuket where the waves are high this time of year and the talk is about social media and rate parity, and oh yes, the next wave in social media.

The waves are high in Phuket at this time of the year. The beach across from the Movenpick Resort & Spa is wide, white and sandy. There's a fresh breeze blowing through the island. It lifts the spirits.
Spirits also seem to be high among hoteliers. The high season is nigh and, barring any other unfortunate incident, Phuket could well enjoy a healthy tourism season this year.

The island needs it.

Its tourism industry has been bruised and battered in the last couple of years - it had a particularly dreadful low season this year with occupancies in some hotels down to 25-30% by some accounts despite some pretty spectacular deals being offered.

The drive from airport to Movenpick - about an hour's drive - is lined not with palm trees but with giant billboards. Someone seems to be aggressively pushing Soho Roast Duck - I wonder if it's any good. A huge factory outlet shopping area makes me think I am in some American town. There are villas for sale everywhere. And you can't miss the huge HomePro stores that have sprung up to support the burgeoning "home" industry on the island.

A sign advertises, "Bored Piles".

One thing's for sure - it's hard to get bored in Phuket. This island has an accommodation type to suit anyone and everyone - from backpacker places to lavish villas. And there are attractions to suit all tastes - from the long-running Simon's Cabaret to an Insectarium. I had time for neither. I was too busy running between the four swimming pools at the Movenpick Resort & Spa, plus trying all the different flavours of Movenpick ice cream my hosts kept piling on me.

Besides, I was there on business - I was attending the Asia Connect event organised by HSMAI (Hospitality Sales & Marketing Associates International) Asia Pacific.

The island needs it. If there's one place where hoteliers need creative sales and marketing skills, this is it.

How do you differentiate yourself in such a crowded and competitive marketplace where the supply is so fragmented and unwieldy? Someone told me there are about 50-60 villa developments for sale because the owners/developers can't find buyers for the individual units.

A girlfriend told me she sat next to a Russian lady on the plane who told her she owned eight villas in Phuket and they were standing empty. The developer had offered to manage her villas and rent them out but she doesn't want to pay the commission, and so she now wants to market them to tourists. And by the way, she and her husband also owns about half a dozen yachts in Phuket which she wants to charter to tourists as well.

At the conference, there was a lot of discussion about social media - about the growing spread and influence of Facebook and Twitter - and the growing power of hotel reviews.

Olivier Dombey of HotelTravel said there were now 800,000 customer reviews in eight languages on its site. Morris Sim of Circos Brand Karma shared data that showed that the four top topics people wrote about in reviews measured across 13,000 hotels in Asia Pacific were quality, room experience, staff and service, and room.

"People are influenced more by experience, than by product," he said.

There was also discussion about rate parity which if you take an island like Phuket is as remote as man finding water on Mars - oh wait, we did, didn't we? So maybe rate parity may well arrive on an island named Phuket sometime soon ...

That's what I like about our industry - we are such optimistic and hopeful creatures - and well, when you are in Phuket at this time of the year, you just can't help but feel a lifting of the spirits.

Blame it on the breeze and waves. Now let me get back to playing with Google Wave - which is being tipped as the next big wave sweeping all social creatures, great and small.

Yeoh Siew Hoon, one of Asia's most respected travel editors and commentators, writes a regular column on news, trends and issues in the hospitality industry for 4Hoteliers.com.

Siew Hoon, who has covered the tourism industry in Asia/Pacific for the past 20 years, runs SHY Ventures Pte Ltd. Her other writings can be found at www.thetransitcafe.com

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