Golden Oldie

I'm new to this site so I don't know how to reply directly to a comment to my post by moe666. Perhaps someone can explain how to do that. 

However, in reply to his reply, I have lived in Chiang Mai for almost six years and have seen the levels of tourism decrease considerably over the last three years, especially in 2019, which obviously wasn't affected by the disaster of Covid. Vendors in shops and markets, and owners of bars and long-established hotels were saying how bad tourism numbers were. In January 2020 I interviewed the owner of one of the top hotels in the city, which had been open for over twenty-five years. He told me Chiang Mai was in a crisis, but most people hadn't realised yet, and it was going to get steadily worse.

In 2019 there was a decrease of 45% in the numbers of people visiting Thailand for the winter, an enormously important group of visitors to Chiang Mai, a figure which is now probably around .000something-or-other

I have been a travel writer for over twenty-five years, mainly in Spain, Morocco, Thailand and SE Asia. I saw what happened in Spain during the crash of 2008 and the desperate years that followed. The country has never fully recovered. 

I stand by my comment that Chiang Mai will never, ever recover tourism to the level of pre-2019, especially with this government in power. I think too much damage has been done to the image of Thailand at a time when peripheral countries are developing. 

Just walk around the streets of Chiang Mai and see how many businesses once thought unassailable are now closed, and how many expensive new hotels, guest houses etc are either opening, or being mothballed before ever seeing a client. The city is finished as a tourist destination and will never, ever see the tourist numbers from pre-2019 again, which even then were down on the previous year, before Mr. Covid even showed his head. Much the same can be said about tourism in Thailand in general, which, given the percentage of GDP it created, can be said about Thailand.

What rarely seems to get mentioned is the destructive effect of the $100,000 Covid insurance, plus the extra health insurance requirement simply to enter the country, on top of the extortionate amounts for quarantine hotels. For someone in the 61-65 year-old group it would be approximately 60,000 baht for covid insurance, 30,000 for health insurance, 36,000 quarantine hotel, total 126,000. (£3,062/$4,191). At my age, 72, it would total 209,000 baht (£5,097/$6,973) - just to enter the country. And these costs are jus to visit, it doesn't matter how long your visa is for. Thailand simply isn't worth it anymore. It's way past it's sell-by date, and visitors will simply go elsewhere if and when travel restrictions are finally lifted. If this government and elite weren't so determined to trouser enormous amounts of bent money, the country might have some tourist future, but as anyone who has lived here for longer than a fortnight knows, that will never, ever happen.