Integrity Legal - Law Firm in Bangkok | Bangkok Lawyer | Legal Services Thailand Back to
Integrity Legal

Legal Services & Resources 

Up to date legal information pertaining to Thai, American, & International Law.

Contact us: +66 2-266 3698

info@integrity-legal.com

ResourcesVisa & Immigration LawThailand Immigration LawThe Only "Crack" in Thailand's Tourism Sector Is a Lack of Tourists

The Only "Crack" in Thailand's Tourism Sector Is a Lack of Tourists

Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing tourism in Thailand. I have really noticed, especially in the past couple of weeks throughout the media, and I am going to point out one article. I am not trying to call this particular platform out, it just was the most indicative of a lot of what I have seen from a lot of the different media out there discussing the tourism side of things. 

There seems to be this constant theme of discussing tourism and not really getting to the crux of the problem. The crux of the problem is that there are no tourists and there are reasons for that, the government's response to COVID being the main one and the restrictions with respect to travel and everything stemming from all of this but long story short, I see the media out there just in many ways just beating around the bush; they are not getting to the main issue with respect to what the tourism sector of Thailand has to overcome and that is its lack of tourists; that is the issue.

A recent article from the Bangkok Post, that is bangkokpost.com article is titled: Exposing the Cracks Within Tourism. That is how I decided to make this video; the crack is no tourists. Quoting directly: "The global pandemic has revealed weaknesses hidden within Thailand's tourism strategy for decades." First of all I would just disagree with that out of hand. Thailand's strategy towards tourism for decades frankly has been a good one which was basically let in tourists. I mean what has changed in the last year, 14 months is they are not letting in any tourists, hence the reason the tourism sector is not doing well. Quoting further: "Deserted walking streets and shuttered hotels can be found everywhere today with no sign of recovery in sight as 80% to 90% of Tourism related businesses have closed because of the lack of foreign tourists." Well yes, correct. If you are a tourism business and there are no tourists you are not going to be in any kind of business. Quoting further: "This market contributed up to two thirds of the industry's total revenue before the pandemic." Yes, foreign tourists were a huge segment of the tourism sector here. Quoting further: "While many countries are looking for sustainable methods to make the domestic market and economy stronger, the Thai Tourism Industry is still dreaming of the good old days of 40 million annual tourists." Well why shouldn't they? I mean presumably this COVID thing is going to end and we are going to get back to it. Do the folks at Bangkok Post know something I don't, which is this is now the "New Normal" that Thailand just doesn't have tourism because I would like to know why. I understand that at least for the time being there are problems that have to be overcome in order to get us back to where we were but there just seems to be this pervasive notion that this is like a forever thing now. We are all just going to be living in this New World where for example in Thailand's case yeah you just can't presume that there are ever going to be 40 million tourists again. Now I totally understand there is a big difference between thinking that is going to happen in like December; that doesn't seem to make a lot of sense based on the numbers. But who is to say that 2023 rolls around, or 2024 rolls around and things start to look like they did back in 2019. Why should we presume that that is not the case? Also, what does sustainable mean? Again they say "while many countries are looking for "sustainable methods" to make domestic market and economy stronger, the tourism industry is still dreaming of the good old days of 40 million annual tourists." Well what is sustainable? I mean what does that even mean? This article is really interesting. I read through it all and it is rather difficult to me to understand exactly what the point of the article is. What are you trying to say? There are no tourists? How do you make how do you make a tourism sector sustainable if there are no tourists? That is the crux of Tourism, is having tourists.

So again it just seems to me like there is a lot going on here and I do understand people are not in the best of moods right now and I think thinking on tourism is not as positive as it once was but to me the biggest solution to the tourism problem is getting some tourists into the country.