Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Thailand's tourism dilemma and the "Retiree Vise". What are we talking about with the "Retiree Vise"? Well there is a lot going on here. As we have noted in other videos, tourism has just substantially been truncated in the last 18, 20 or so months. I think we are going to close out 2021 probably on a good note where we are seeing Thailand re-open and we are seeing some tourists starting to come into the Kingdom but where it is really not looking, I mean 2019, 40 million tourists. Even 2020 there were millions because there was that first quarter, the end of the 2019 high season if you will, where we saw tourists coming in. 2021 has been for lack of a better term abysmal. There has just been virtually, as far as it goes, it is infinitesimally small numbers of tourism compared to normal times. So 2021, not to put too fine a point on it, hasn't been that great from a tourism standpoint. Thailand is trying. I think they want to encourage tourism but then at the same time and we have discussed this in many videos, there seems to be this in my opinion rather perplexing kind of paradigm where encouraging high net worth VIP tourists and retirees and expats and kind of discouraging or it seems to be implicitly at least not encouraging the average Joe kind of retiree or expat or tourist; going for this high-end "quality over quantity". Well Thailand made its money in the tourism sector on “quantity” quite frankly. Yes, high end tourists made up a certain segment of that but just letting in folks who want to come to Thailand, enjoy Thailand, spend their money and go out about their lives, there is nothing wrong with that. Middle class money spins the same as far as I am concerned.

Now what are we talking about with this "Retiree Vise"? Well, the way I see it, if Thailand doesn't make some moves in the right direction now we could find ourselves in a real problem 5 especially 10 years down the road. What am I talking about? Well I have just noticed in the almost 15 years I have been here that certain industries and I think the Thailand tourism, entertainment; whatever you want to call it accommodation, hospitality sector, and this isn't necessarily for just short-term tourists; we are talking about places that rent to folks that come out here for months at a time or even live here, retirees and such. Those places come to depend on a certain demography and quite frankly and I am not trying to bring this up to be macabre to our retiree audience but those folks eventually are no longer here. They pass away or they may become elderly and medically or physically incapable of remaining in Thailand and essentially time goes on and it phases out these retirees. Well the presumption seems to be right now that simply opening Thailand is going to get more people coming in. You have got to get younger folks to get those older retirees and retirees to me are very much a life blood. They are a very good part of the foreign sector that brings in foreign money in a kind of "Tourism kind of context". As time goes on, they may become truly permanent fixtures here but in the beginning oftentimes, they are kind of a more seasonal kind of traveler. Well you have to build that and you build that by being open to younger tourists who come to get to know Thailand and come to love it over time and then they get “locked in” to coming here for lack of a better term.  

Well as it sits right now, I think the strategy of only focusing on high net worth individuals risks substantially destabilizing this retiree sector in the middle and longer term because if you are not encouraging broad swathes of people to come in, even younger folks coming in broad swathes, then where is the pool of potential retirees going to be if they have never come to Thailand in the first place.  

So the point of this video is sort of yes retirees appear to be a very separate demographic all off on their own and tourists appear to be a separate demographic all off on their own but they really are all part of very much one singular demography that has a very massive impact over time if one were to kind of neglect maintaining that tourism base in a more long-term framework.