Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing the Thailand Pass and we are posing the question, "Is the Thailand Pass a ‘poison pill’ for tourism here in Thailand?"

I would say it very much is having a negative impact on Thai tourism, on what tourists are looking at when they are coming in to Thailand. I have had a lot of different people comment on this issue basically saying to me, "I would otherwise come but for," I thought I had a quote here on this, I thought I would otherwise come but for the "Thailand Pass" but a lot of folks have said, I don't even really need to quote, I have had so many people bring it up to me that it is pretty self-evident to me, as long as this Thailand Pass exists the tourism sector is going to have problems and it is going to be operating in an economically depressed manner. 

They say the definition of a "depression" in economic terms is you have a certain trend where the economy is sort of going up, then you have a major event, it causes a downturn and then depression means to just have your economy or a sector of your economy to be operating below trend. I definitely think we could say the last two years the Thai tourism sector has been in a depression, at least exclusively that. I am not going to talk about the overall economy but definitely the tourism sector has been operating in a depressed manner. Okay, if you view the past two years as sort of this intervening event and we are sort of getting out past this, we still have to deal with this Thailand Pass at least for the immediately foreseeable future and I think as long as we are dealing with that here in Thailand, we are going to see the tourism sector operate under trend; it's not going to get back to where it was. 

I do understand policy makers right now they are trying to do a cost-benefit analysis in understanding exactly what that means, or in understanding exactly what's worth it in terms of getting rid of certain restrictions versus the economic benefits associated therewith. Hopefully and especially as we see this be deemed endemic we will see a lot of these restrictions be rescinded, Thailand Pass being one of them, and hopefully thereafter we will see a major resurgence in the tourism sector. It remains to be seen but we can hope.