Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video would suggest, maybe I am being a little bit snarky but my question is "do quality tourists grow on trees?" It is sort of me being a little bit snarky in this video but I thought about this and making this video when I read this article from Hua Hin Today, that is huahintoday.com, the article is titled: Thailand to "focus on quality tourists who can spend more". I have made a lot of videos on this channel especially here recently regarding this notion of "quality over quantity". I mean I really don't really understand the logic behind this. Now let's be clear, when we talk quality and quantity etc., I am not talking about letting in foreign criminals or folks that are indigent or something like that. I am talking about there seems to be this prevailing paradigm that is shifting toward trying to attract 1 million “super wealthy” individuals and just kind of giving short shrift to the 40 million folks that just got on a plane and came to Thailand, spent some money, didn't commit any crimes and went home. I don't understand why we are going for one over the other. To me, any tourist that comes here with enough money to pay for themselves, pay their own way, who doesn't commit a bunch of crimes, and not even a bunch doesn't commit any crimes or act in a criminal manner, and just comes to Thailand to spend some time here, spends some money here has some fun and leaves, I mean why are we trying to look for anything other than that? I don't really get it, but okay. 

Let's go ahead and quote from this article again, Thailand to "focus on quality tourists who can spend more", huahintoday.com,  quoting directly: "The post-pandemic recovery of Thailand's tourism sector will focus on quality rather than quantity, Deputy Prime Minister and Energy Minister Supattanapong Punmeechaow said earlier this week". My question is, what is the Energy Minister doing talking about this? Don't get me wrong. They are all in Cabinet and I am sure he was involved in the discussion. I think it is interesting, I am very much an American in my upbringing and the Parliamentary System is very different in many ways to the system we use in the US. One aspect of this is the Cabinet kind of operates in these parliamentary systems as kind of one more cohesive operation whereas in the States, Cabinet members tend to stay in their own "lane". You never hear the Energy Secretary in the US talking about something having to do with tourism. It is just not in his portfolio, for lack of a better term. I am not saying it is better or worse, I am just saying it is strange when I read these things, it is strange to me when I see someone from TAT talking about tourism or the Tourism and Sports Minister talking about tourism okay I think to myself, okay he is the tourism guy but maybe that is just me. Quoting directly: "The Thai Government recently announced ambitious plans to attract 1 million foreign tourists by April next year. The arrival of foreign tourists will be helped by the easing of restrictions including the removal of mandatory quarantine requirement for all visitors to Thailand from November 1." Well that remains to be seen. As we have done other videos on this channel; not quite certain that is going to happen just yet but it looks like it. I am being cautiously optimistic that it will come to pass. "Speaking at the Bangkok Post Forum 2021 DPM Supattanapong said instead of relying on 40 million tourists to generate 2 trillion Baht in revenue, we will focus on quality tourists who can spend more." Then this was interesting in this article. "The Thai Government also recently announced plans to attract 1 million foreign expats to the country." Which, are these plans for tourists or expats? That didn't make a ton of sense to me but okay, never mind. 

This notion of replacing 40 million with 1 million and getting the same revenue, and they don't actually say in here to be clear that they are going to end up with the same revenue, although it is kind of implied from the way I read it. Now again I kind of restate this I just don't know why we need to discriminate against perfectly good quantity of folks that just want to come here and be tourists and let me also be clear, a lot of people have corresponded with me and they think I am kind of negative on Thailand. I am really not. That is not the purpose of these videos. I love Thailand and I really want Thailand to do the best that she can. I just sometimes think people get blinders on especially when they are looking at the same issue for a prolonged period of time in the same way and sometimes I think that folks can get into kind of an echo chamber where they are only talking to people that are thinking like them and they may be a losing sight of the forest for the trees, if you will. 

The point of this video and kind of my opinion, I think we should really rethink the notion of only going after or the implied notion of specifically seeking quality, this "high quality" when we have had a really good run with just standard middle class tourists coming to Thailand. It has actually been quite good; it has been good for the country for decades. Hopefully, maybe there will be some policy rethinking and maybe we will not at the very least not give the cold shoulder to a large number of people who have the resources and just want to come to Thailand, have a good time, not cause any problems and go on home.