Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Thai Officials, officials here in Thailand are now getting picky about the types of tourists that they are seeking?

I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Pattaya Mail, that is pattayamail.com, the article is titled: Officials fear Pattaya and Phuket are overcrowded hotspots. Quoting directly: "Some commentators see Thailand's recent crackdown on foreign crime - over 400 arrested Phuket on a variety of charges - and the likely banning of leisure Cannabis later this year." Again I did a video contemporaneously with this one on the leisure Cannabis thing. That's not a foregone conclusion, in fact by a long shot. Quoting further: "As signs that the Government wants to deter some fun-loving overseas visitors. As one Cabinet Minister put it: "We want quality tourists from now on". Who determines that? And meanwhile, ever since all this insane overreach across the board in all these different jurisdictions began with COVID, there has just been this constant bureaucratic hubris pervasive out there that you can micromanage the economy; you can turn it up and down like a thermostat; like you can turn up and down tourism like a thermostat, or that "Oh we need to hit some Goldilocks 'just right place' with regard to tourism; we have got to worry about so-called overtourism which isn't even a real word that they have just made up - which anytime people make up words always be leery. Primarily that's what lawyers in a Common Law context do, they make up new words or they create phrases that have a meaning different from the plain English language thereof. The point being, when you are seeing people making up words, the hairs on the back of your neck should start going up. 

With regard to this whole thing, the notion of overtourism which is I thought what we were going for - they have even said and we made other videos on this, that basically tourism for 2024 is projected to be at parallel with 2019. Well nobody was talking about 'overtourism' back in 2019. If anything, people as I recall they were saying: "Well '19 wasn't the greatest year we ever had. We would like to see more next year and then 2020 happened and we all know what went down there and time moved on.

The point I am trying to make with regard to this video is this notion that we can somehow hand-pick what types of tourists we want. Now that's very different, that criticism is very different from the notion that yes there are tourists, ostensible tourists who come to Thailand and then engage in illegal occupations or work without a Work Permit or try to live here on a Tourist Visa; we have the mechanisms for dealing with that. Thai Law Enforcement is well equipped, especially the Immigration apparatus, as we have discussed they actually added a number of new officers prior to COVID and again this is an example of the fact that Thai Law enforcement has the resources at their disposal to go ahead and actually enforce Thai Immigration Law. What we don't really need to be doing in my opinion is messing with tourism itself or the notion of Tourism itself.

Thailand needs tourism. It's a big part of the economy; it is not the only part of the economy. I have never been somebody who has said that but it does serve a great many entrepreneurs here in Thailand and takes care of a lot of small businesses as well as large businesses. Why would we want to mess with that?