Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing "Bleisure" travel, Leisure with "B" on the beginning of it. What are we talking about here? Well this has been bandied about a lot, I have noticed in the ether that is the internet, kind of the Thai centric internet associated with expats here in Thailand, this notion of “Bleisure” travel; it is kind of a blend of business and leisure travel. BBC, bbc.com, seems to sum things up. The article is titled: The rise of the Bleisure Traveller. Quoting directly: “Business travel + leisure travel = bleisure travel. It's a hybrid that is growing in popularity as like were as work-life boundaries blur."  Quoting further: "From the Digital Nomad tapping out a blog post on a beach in Bali to the Manager checking her emails on a Niseko ski lift, from the full-time freelancer in a co-working space to the engineer coding from his home-office, technology has blurred the boundaries between work and play, professional and personal, career and down time. A creative agency might bat around ideas over the ping pong table; an architectural firm might be at its most productive on retreat. And as the lines between work and life blur, so do the distinctions between business and personal travel. It's a trend that goes way beyond the tried-and-tested formula of bring your partner to a conference. Where destinations appeal, professionals around the globe are increasingly adding weekends or even weeks to work trips whether solo, with a partner or as a family." The reason I went ahead and quoted this rather more extensively than I usually quote things on these videos, this seems to be the paradigm that the Thai policy makers if you will who are trying to stimulate the tourism sector, this seems to be where they are aiming, they are trying to bring these folks in. Now I would argue so long as we have any kind of substantial quarantine measures we are going to have a hard time selling this no matter what. I mean there is already, especially with the West, there is already a substantial travel time associated with coming to Thailand and to add all this extra stuff on here that we are dealing with right now, it is a pretty high bar for many folks to come here. My personal opinion just kind of off topic is Thailand really should continue to focus, in my opinion at least for the near term on retiree expats. I think that is going to be really where our bread and butter is going to be frankly. But this whole notion of Bleisure, this blending of business and leisure Travel. There may be something to it. I am not going to dismiss it out of hand but again what my hope is that we declare this whole thing endemic, move on with our lives; get the country reopened to a state a play that is akin to what we were at quarter one of 2020 and getting high volume of tourists into Thailand and not really working about all these made up name groups of people; Bleisure Travelers, Digital Nomads, let's just get some travelers. That would be what I would think.

Now that said, all of these proposed visas we are seeing, work authorization on certain Elite cards and stuff yes I do think we are definitely seeing a paradigm shift towards this Bleisure travel. But look let's be clear, I don't think you are ever going to, I don't know how many Bleisure Travelers it is going to take to replace 39 million in and out travelers to Thailand. So is it a good idea? Yeah I took it is a fine idea insofar as we need to be looking somewhere and it is a good idea to try to think creatively but my opinion is let's get back to what we were doing at the first quarter of 2020 and move on with rectifying the Tourism Sector here in the Kingdom of Thailand.