Hotels' rooms in Hat Yai expected to be fully-booked for Hari Raya

SONGKHLA, August 14 (TNA) - Hotels' rooms in Thailand’s southern business hub of Hat Yai are expected to be fully-booked over the coming weekend when Muslims celebrate their Hari Raya Festival, marking the end of Ramadan, the annual Islamic holy month of fasting. Somchart Pimthanapoonporn, president of an association of hoteliers in Hat Yai, told journalists that room reservations of local hotels have kept rising and all hotels' rooms should be fully-booked this coming weekend when Muslim brothers and sisters celebrate the Hari Raya Festival. Somchart acknowledged, however, that reservations of local hotels' rooms have dropped when compared to those in the same period of last year, which should have resulted from continual violence in the insurgency-plagued Thai far South. The chief of Hat Yai's hoteliers association projected that about 50 million baht should change hands during the Hari Raya Festival this year, compared with the usual amount of some 100 million baht. (TNA)