Two Phuket hotel-licensing figures surfaced within a day of each other in mid-August 2026, and they describe different problems.
What happened
On August 11, 2026, Bangkok Post reported that Sarayuth Mallam, president of the Phuket Tourist Association, told the Interior Ministry that roughly 70% of hotels in Phuket remain unlicensed. Speaking at a meeting with Deputy Interior Minister Worasit Liangprasit, Sarayuth said the island has about 5,000 hotel establishments but only around 800 currently hold a valid hotel-business licence. He asked the ministry to extend two things: the Interior Ministry’s “tourism clinic,” a consultation programme for unregistered operators whose registration window closed on July 10, and a ministerial regulation — first issued in 2016 and amended several times since — that lets buildings not originally built as hotels apply for a licence. Operators say that regulation lapsed in August 2025. Sarayuth also said some small and medium operators trying to come into compliance have been asked for bribes to obtain the building certification a hotel licence requires, and raised the risk of a fire in an unlicensed property with inadequate safety facilities.
A day later, on August 12, 2026, Deputy Government Spokesperson Ploytalay Laksameesaengjan said the government had approved 275 of 392 hotel-licence applications that had been pending in Phuket since 2018, leaving 117 still under review, Nation Thailand reported. She said the review was ordered by Prime Minister and Interior Minister Anutin Charnvirakul and that the remaining cases are targeted for completion by September 2026. Brickinfotv and other Thai outlets reported the same figures the same day.
No PRD release, Interior Ministry licence register, or the text of the 2016 ministerial regulation was independently reviewed for this article; the figures above are attributed to the outlets that reported them.
- Approved70%
- Still pending30%
Two different numbers, two different populations
Houseviser analysis. The 392-case backlog and the “about 5,000 hotels, 800 licensed” figure do not describe the same count. The 392 figure appears to be applications already filed and stuck in Phuket’s review queue since 2018 — a bounded, countable backlog the government can work through case by case, and reportedly is. The 800-of-5,000 figure describes something larger: the island’s whole stock of hotel-type accommodation, most of which, on Sarayuth’s account, is not currently licensed. Simple arithmetic on his own figures puts that unlicensed group at roughly 4,200 properties — notably more than the 70% he cited, a gap the reporting does not explain. Being unlicensed is not the same as being unable to apply: only some unspecified share of that group is blocked outright because the 2016 building-type regulation has lapsed, and the reporting does not say how large a share. Clearing the 392-case backlog by September, if it happens, would not by itself change the larger number.
Who is affected
Anyone buying, selling, or renting out a small or mid-sized hotel, guesthouse, or villa-rental building in Phuket — particularly a property converted from a house or another structure not originally built as a hotel. A licence application already inside the 2018 backlog has either already been decided — the government says 275 of the 392 had been, as of August 12 — or is one of the 117 cases it says it is working toward a September 2026 decision. A property that has never been able to apply, because it depends on the lapsed building-type regulation, currently has no clear route to a licence while that regulation remains unaddressed.
What it may mean for Phuket property
Houseviser analysis. A seller’s claim that a hotel or villa-rental licence “is pending” is worth a follow-up question: pending in the post-2018 administrative queue nearing a September decision, or pending in the sense that the property cannot even file an application until the ministry acts on the lapsed regulation? The two situations carry different timelines and different risk, and neither August report resolves which applies to a given address. Our guide to short-term rentals and the Hotel Act explains what a hotel licence covers and what operating without one exposes an owner to.
What remains unknown
- Whether the Interior Ministry will extend the tourism clinic programme or the lapsed 2016 building-type regulation; neither report records a decision.
- Whether the 117 remaining backlog cases will in fact clear by September 2026.
- How many of the roughly 4,200 unlicensed properties implied by Sarayuth’s own figures are blocked specifically by the lapsed regulation, as opposed to other compliance gaps, and why that figure sits above his own 70% estimate.
- Whether the 392-case backlog and the wider unlicensed population overlap, and by how much.
- The addresses or licence-reference numbers behind either figure; neither report published them.
This article is not legal advice.