Central Festival Phuket

The Original Wing of Central Phuket Shopping Mall

Central Festival Phuket is the original wing of Central Phuket, opened in 2004 and still the busiest part of the mall. It’s built around a large central courtyard that hosts weekend events, car shows, and the occasional beer garden. Four floors cover everything from SuperSports and fashion brands to food courts and the SFX Cinema on the top level.

I don’t usually list shopping malls as must-do attractions, but Central Festival is a good option on a rainy day or when you need a break from the heat. Most visitors come for the food, the air conditioning, or a quick movie. The newer Floresta wing sits across the road and has its own page here.

If you’ve come across names like Festival and Floresta and wondered what they mean, they are just two parts of the same Central Phuket mall, located in Phuket Town.

• Festival Wing is the original side, opened in 2004 (this page)
• Floresta Wing came later in 2018, built across the street on the old Thai Naan Restaurant site.

There’s a large glass sky bridge connecting both sides, so you don’t have to cross the road. If you’re in other parts of the island, there’s also Central Patong, Jungceylon, and Porto de Phuket up in Bang Tao.

Central Festival Restaurants

People used to shop first and eat later. These days, it’s the opposite — food is often the main reason to go.

The Full List:

Restaurant	Cuisine	Floor
Sushiro	Conveyor belt sushi	3rd
Bar B Q Plaza	Thai Moo Kata	3rd
MK Restaurants	Thai suki	3rd
Fuji Japanese Restaurant	Japanese	3rd
Yayoi	Japanese set meals	3rd
Katsuya	Tonkatsu	3rd
Miyazaki Teppanyaki	Japanese teppanyaki	3rd
Hachiban Ramen	Ramen	3rd
Sizzler	Steaks and salad bar	3rd
The Pizza Company	Pizza	3rd
Sukishi	Korean charcoal grill	3rd
Yum Saap	Thai salads	3rd
Black Canyon Coffee	Cafe and Thai food	3rd
S&P	Bakery and Thai food	3rd
Haidilao Hot Pot	Chinese hot pot	2nd
Ginger Farm Kitchen	Northern Thai (Michelin)	1st
Azzurro Ristorante	Italian	1st
Zen Japanese Restaurant	Japanese	1st
Wine Connection	Wine bar and Western	1st
Sunshine Dessert Cafe	Desserts	1st

Central Festival Wing

The older wing still gets the most foot traffic, especially on weekends when something’s going on. It’s built in a wide loop with a central courtyard that often becomes a beer garden or event zone. It’s louder at the end of the month when there are car shows or sales events, but quieter on weekdays, and I always find the parking challenging.

Lanlom Zone

The best restaurants in the Festival wing aren’t actually inside the mall. They’re in the Lanlom zone, an open-air area on the ground floor that wraps around the outside of the building. This is where you’ll find Ginger Farm Kitchen, Wine Connection, Azzurro, and a few others. It’s a completely different feel from the food courts upstairs, more relaxed, with outdoor seating and better food. I end up here almost every time I visit the mall.

Central Phuket Shopping Gallery

The main shopping gallery is where I’ve seen the biggest change over the years. It used to be packed with shops and just a couple of restaurants where you’d take a break after shopping. Now it’s the opposite. Online shopping got huge in Asia, and I watched shop after shop get replaced by franchise restaurants. People come to the mall to eat first, then have a look around. A lot of them check what’s on display, try a size, then go home and order it online because it’s cheaper. The fashion and cosmetic shops that remain include Sephora, Guess, Zara, H&M, Mango, and Esprit. On weekends, the central courtyard hosts loud commercial events, and it gets even louder at the end of the month with motor shows and property expos. The rest of the time, the area is a big display of discounted items.

Central Food Hall

Central Food Hall is on the 1st floor, and it’s grown a lot over the years. Like everything else in this mall, it started smaller and kept expanding. These days it’s immense, with more imported products than you could ever need. They also added a huge wine section with a real selection, which means something if you’ve been in Phuket long enough to remember when wine was almost impossible to find on the island. On the side of the supermarket, there are now a few restaurants serving higher quality food than what you’ll get in the upstairs food courts. The rest of the 1st floor has everyday fashion brands like Jaspal, CC-OO, Uniqlo, and a basic food court for quick, cheap meals.

• Central Food Hall – Good mix of imported groceries and deli items.
• Fashion stores – Jaspal, CC-OO, Uniqlo, and other Thai mid-range brands.
• Food court – Easy and cheap meals.

Studio 7

Studio7 has reopened on the second floor of Central Phuket’s Festival Zone in the new Apple Premium Partner format, the first in southern Thailand. The shop stocks the full range of Apple devices: iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, AirPods, and official accessories. That’s my go-to shop when I want to buy something from Apple.

Sports & Lifestyle

When Central Phuket first opened, SuperSports was the only sports shop on this floor, and it was probably half the size it is today. It was already a big store, but nothing like what you see now. Then the chunky sole sneaker trend took off, everyone wanted sport shoes that looked good and felt comfortable, and the whole floor changed.

SuperSports doubled its space and became massive, covering equipment, shoes, and apparel for almost every sport and brand you can think of. Dedicated brand shops started popping up around it too: Under Armour, The North Face, New Balance, and several more. The second floor of the Festival Wing is now basically a sports shopping zone. I like to browse and see what’s new whenever I’m at the mall. My favourite shop on this floor is still RevRunner.

SFX Cinema

3rd Floor – Fast Food and Cinema

When Central Phuket first opened, the SFX Cinema felt like a big deal. It was more modern and comfortable than any other cinema in Phuket at the time, and I used to go twice a month. Then I discovered the VIP rooms, and that changed everything. You get reclining seats or actual beds with blankets, and they bring you a glass of wine. It felt like an affordable luxury. Funny thing is, if the movie were boring, you’d always fall asleep in those beds. In recent years, with streaming and social media taking over, the cinema is a lot quieter than it used to be, and I don’t go as often. But it’s still there on the 3rd floor, alongside a second food court with mostly Asian fast food options.

4th Floor

The 4th floor is mostly dedicated to beauty: clinics, massages, nail salons, and haircuts. It’s the kind of floor you don’t really browse; you go when you have a purpose. I used to go to Cut and Curl regularly for a haircut, and the team was good and friendly. There are also slimming clinics, skincare places, and brow bars up here. It’s quiet compared to the floors below, which is probably the point.

• The uppermost floor is all about beauty. Haircuts, nail salons, skincare — this is the salon level.
• Beauty zone – Haircuts, nails, brows, slimming clinics — the usual suspects

To the Floresta Wing

Central Floresta opened in 2018 as a high-end extension of the original Festival wing. It had a difficult start. The mall tried to pull visitors with Tribhum, a huge interactive 3D walkthrough theme park based on Thai mythology that took up the entire ground floor. It opened in 2019 with tickets at 1,500 Baht for adults, but it never really caught on. Reviews were mixed, the price was steep for what you got, and the place was often half empty. Tribhum closed and was demolished in 2025.

The Floresta wing is a lot more popular now, especially since they opened two massive Starbucks that are always packed. The supermarket on the ground floor is probably the busiest spot in the whole wing. Restaurants on the top floor and ground floor keep opening and closing, making it hard for me to keep up. As it’s on the outskirts of Phuket Town, Floresta still appeals more to locals than tourists. I always park my car here and cross the sky bridge to Festival, because finding a space on the Festival side is a nightmare.

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How do you get to Central Phuket from Patong?

You can smoothly go from Patong to Central Phuket by using the free shuttle that runs every hour or every hour and a half from 11 am to 7 pm from Patong and from noon to 8.30 pm from Central Phuket (see schedule).

Keep in mind that while the bus stop in Patong is easy to find near Bangla Walking Street, Central Phuket Town is a bit on the outskirts of town, so you will need a second bus ride if you wish to continue to Old Town (Old Town is about 3 km away).

 

If you drive a car, I’d recommend parking at Central Floresta; it’s a lot easier and has a lot of space (for now).

More about Central Phuket

More Photos of Central Festival Phuket

Where to Shop in Phuket

Frequently Asked Questions about Central Phuket