Phuket’s Tourism Bonanza Leaves Locals Struggling with Traffic and Water Cuts

Phuket’s skyline of construction cranes and neon hotel signs signals another record-breaking high season, but locals can’t ignore the traffic snarls and intermittent water cuts that have become the island’s unwanted trademarks. Behind the postcard images lies a race between booming visitor numbers and an overstretched support system—one that many fear the resort hub is losing.

Fast facts at a glance

• Tourist arrivals surpassed 2.4 M in the first five months of 2025, up 8% year-on-year.

• The island’s design capacity was for 400,000 residents; on peak days it now hosts nearly 2 M people including workers and holiday-makers.

• ฿253 B nationwide infrastructure plan lists 287 projects; several key Phuket items remain stuck in paperwork.

• Average visitor spend has climbed to ฿50,000+ per trip, yet locals report higher living costs and longer commutes.

Island bursting at the seams

Phuket was once marketed as a sleepy fishing-cum-tin-mining enclave. Today its population ballooned far beyond its original carrying capacity, with registered migrant labour (≈130,000) and an army of informal workers swelling daily head-counts. Urban planners note that beach districts such as Kamala and Rawai already exceed their physical limits, eroding dunes and stressing fragile coral systems. Gridlocked highways, overflowing rubbish bins and water-rationing notices have become routine even before the holiday rush begins.

Visitors are spending more—but at what cost?

Tourism bosses celebrate the shift toward “quality travellers” who stay longer, book pool villas, and drop cash on wellness retreats. Big-ticket festivals—from Thailand Biennale Phuket 2025 to an expanded EDC Thailand—are designed to stretch demand into the rainy months. Average receipts above ฿50,000 per head are higher than pre-Covid levels, according to the Phuket Tourist Association. Yet residents whisper that price inflation on groceries, rent and taxi fares is outpacing wages, testing the very liveability that draws digital nomads and retirees.

Bottlenecks everywhere: roads, runway, reservoirs

Traffic bottlenecks have turned the scenic Patong hill road into a daily one-hour crawl. The long-awaited Kathu–Patong tunnel promises relief but has endured a revolving door of funding models. At the airport, Phase 2 expansion seeks to lift annual passenger throughput from 12.5 M to 18 M, but design work will not finish until late 2025, leaving peak-hour queues spilling onto tarmac buses. Meanwhile, taps in Chalong and Cherng Talay ran dry for days last April, reviving talk of the Cheow Lan Dam pipeline, a 300-km water lifeline cutting across Surat Thani, Krabi and Phang-nga. The blueprint—floated since the 1990s—must now be re-costed in tens of billions of baht.

Big-ticket plans inch forward

The Transport Ministry’s 2025-2026 playbook includes:

Four-lane upgrade of Highway 402 and a new airport spur road.

Gok-kathu elevated highway & tunnel (16,757 M baht) where piling is slated for April 2026; a toll-free policy for the tunnel segment is under budget review.

Phuket Light-Rail starter EV buses ahead of full track launch by 2031.

Andaman International Airport in Phang-nga, targeting 22.5 M passengers, intended to divert charter traffic.

Still, procurement delays, land-acquisition disputes and shifting PPP formulas plague timetables. “We keep rewriting memoranda while visitor counts keep climbing,” one senior provincial engineer admitted off-record.

What planners say must change

Urban-design think-tanks argue Phuket needs a paradigm shift rather than more concrete alone. Key proposals include:

• Zoning laws that cap beachfront density and steer mixed-use towers toward Phuket Town.

• Priority lanes for electric buses, songthaew and delivery bikes to ease congestion.

• Green infrastructure—from waste-to-energy plants to rain-catchment ponds—to cushion resource shocks.

• Digital dashboards for real-time tourist head-counts, enabling authorities to throttle arrivals if public utilities near breaking point.

• Community-led heritage trails to disperse tourists beyond Patong, spreading income while protecting marine parks.

Why Bangkok should pay attention

Phuket accounts for roughly 14% of Thailand’s tourism receipts, acting as both cash cow and policy test-bed. If the island cannot align growth with sustainability, analysts warn, other resort provinces—from Krabi to Koh Samui—could replay the same script. Conversely, a Phuket that solves its infrastructure puzzle offers a blueprint for resilient, high-value tourism nationwide. The next 24 months, insiders say, will reveal whether masterplans translate into bulldozers—or remain glossy brochures.

The takeaway for residents and investors

Phuket’s promise is undimmed: turquoise seas, global air links, and surging visitor spend. Yet water security, road capacity and local sentiment are emerging as investment risk indicators on par with room rates and RevPAR spreadsheets. Businesses that champion conservation, back smart-city pilots and engage local councils may find themselves on the right side of both regulation and reputation. For islanders, the hope is simple: that future growth funds, rather than fractures, the paradise they call home.