Phuket: a Thai Big Mac with the country's sharpest tourist premium
Phuket's Big Mac price runs above the Thai national average — sometimes briefly approaching Bangkok levels in peak tourist season — driven entirely by international visitor demand. The island sees roughly 10 million visitors annually in normal years, and resort-area pricing diverges sharply from the local Thai cost base.
For Big Mac Index analysts, Phuket is Thailand's clearest tourist-premium signal. The Phuket-Chiang Mai spread is wider than the Bangkok-Chiang Mai spread, despite Bangkok being the country's economic center. That ordering — tourist island > capital > secondary city — only makes sense if international demand is doing the price-setting. Watch Phuket's Big Mac through the 2025-2026 high season as a clean read on global leisure-travel demand recovery, particularly from Russia, China, and northern Europe.