kinyara

Exactly, the minor inconvenience of an extra hour at Immigration pales into insignificance when you compare it to a good marriage and good family. There is always a better reason to stay when you consider the bigger picture, plus the added benefit for some that they can still have a good moan at the Thai system and authorities. I'll say it again, that the biggest serial Immigration whingers I personally know who banged on about the inconvenience of having to go into immigration for their 90 day reports are the only ones who haven't bothered to switch to doing it online. Says it all to me.

Any particular reason why the " many foreigners looking to leave Thailand " haven't left already ? After all the country has been open for a couple of years now and if the places you mention are so attractive and easy immigration wise why on earth are they still here.

From the OP it sounded like him and a couple of dozen other people had found enough good reasons to stay in Thailand another 30 days.

Not quite as bad as the Chinese shortfall but Indian numbers year to date September are still 23% lower than in 2019. Guess they've got to try something to get their numbers up, remains to be seen like the Chinese whether a simple visa concession will have much of an impact especially given the short length of the average visit.

Sorry to read about your accident just now BritManToo, all the best for your full recovery.

They seek permanent refuge in countries like the UK, they are not looking for a 2 week holiday in the sun. I think you're making light of their situation to have a dig at Thailand.

They never chose to come to Thailand before why would you think they'd want to come now ?

They appear to be realistic, last year they were forecasting 10 million arrivals and achieved 11 million, this year they forecast between 25 - 30 million due to the uncertainty of the Chinese market and it looks like they will achieve 27 million.

It is for the online news advertising media, it attracts people such as yourself and your engagement helps them sell advertising.

The irony of using the words " Move Forward " twice and establishing a coalition firmly entrenched in the past, made up of the worst group of influential figures and families in the country. Already given up on the simplest of election promises that would help the average person, raising the minimum wage, and concentrating on mega state projects that make their ilk richer through corruption. Sickening.

Part of the problem for Thailand is the Chinese tourists that are coming here at the moment are more of the younger independent travellers as opposed to the perhaps older generation tour groups. The youngsters are tech savvy, so while the Thai govt has teamed up with several large Chinese media corporations to try and control / (sugar coat ?) the narrative, I doubt it's going to stop the reality of people's holiday experiences getting out there via other social media channels. Judging by the Chinese arrival numbers to Oct 22nd mentioned the other day they must be seriously worried that their easing of visa restrictions is having little to no impact so far in the lead up to a crucial few months.

I think opening later is counter productive, just leads to more crime and general anti-social behaviour and a more lawless/negative picture of the city, which may well put more tourists off visiting rather than attracting them. Additional expenditure or just the same budgets spread over extended opening hours ? That lady has complained in the press in the past about late night music coming from the cars parked along Jomtien Beach Road, ( presumably because it was affecting her ), so she's aware of the anti-social nature of later night socialising

I feel every sympathy for the Thai workers and the situation they are in, terrible situation to be in for people trying to better themselves and their families economically. Early days but I'm not impressed with what I'm seeing from the Thai PM on the international front so far, I think he's showing a real lack of experience in how he's going about things publicly. I think I read previously that part of his character was a tendency towards a fiery temper, which could point towards insecurity of decision making, will be interesting to see how that develops if things don't go his way. This is an early pressure situation he didn't envisage.

I cannot for the life of me understand the viabilty of the hundreds of Cannabis outlets of varying sizes that have filled a lot of the empty units. Purely from what I see walking around it seems like the old bar model where there are already far too many of them in competition and when I look in there is never more than one or 2 customers if anyone. Strange, very strange.

They should already have a good indication of how the next 3 months is looking with forward hotel bookings, keep an eye on the local rags for any info. from the Hotel Association or Head Tourism representative. Nationally the just released September tourist figure was 73% of Sept 2019, which is pretty consistent with the last 5 months, don't suppose Pattaya is bucking that trend given it relies just as much on the Chinese who are the major shortfall.

Since it's regularly mentioned as a sizeable regional competitor I always look at the monthly figures of Vietnam compared to Thailand. Pre-covid 2019 Vietnam attracted 45% of the tourist numbers of Thailand, post-Covid 2023 August year to date Vietnam has attracted 44% of the tourist numbers of Thailand. I'm not sure the major factors negatively affecting Thailand, such as the Chinese slowdown, reduced airline capacity, higher travel costs and general economic factors are any different for the other countries in the region.

I don't either but you're making assertions without any information to support them, so I'll take that as a no. As an example the tourist length of stay statistics would look very strange if they included expats on retirement visas as tourists. My recent trip overseas was 3 years after my last one, so if your theory of including every expat arrival as a tourist was correct I would show up in the statistics as a tourist staying over 1,000 days.

If you read almost any thread about tourist numbers that's exactly the line that many posters take regarding Malaysian tourists, classifying them as day shoppers or even more bizarrly workers, which of course isn't supported by the facts, namely in common with other Asian countries the average length of stay is 4-5 days. 2022 wasn't a tourism anomaly regarding arrival method by Malaysian tourists. See " International Tourist Arrivals by Mode of Transport 2011-2020 " in the attached link, which shows consistently year by year arrivals by land were 60%+ of the total from Malaysia. http://statbbi.nso.go.th/staticreport/page/sector/en/17.aspx

Someone should buy the old codger a basic Casio with an alarm function given how often he falls asleep on official business.

I suspect the only people that mention hubs in this country are the shoddy little western owned clickbait online advertising websites masquerading as news outlets.

In 2022 the Pattaya municipality electorate had the chance to register their displeasure towards the family responsible for the appalling infrastructure and the billions " wasted " on unfinished projects that have been seen in the city over the last 2 decades. The voter turnout was 49.96%. Galling as it is, I have little sympathy for those who have an opportunity to at least try and make a change but can't be bothered to vote for it.

https://www.tatnews.org/2022/10/tat-says-amazing-thailand-a-million-thanks-to-the-malaysians/#:~:text=Between 1 January%2C 2022%2C and,across the Thai-Malaysian border. " Between 1st January 2022 and 7 October 2022, almost 1.1 million Malaysian tourists visited Thailand, accounting for 60% of this total was overland travel across the Thai-Malaysian border ". TAT thanking tourists they don't count. 😂

Can you support your theory with any hard facts, or is it just your usual hearsay ?

Utter rubbish, they even published a breakdown of the 39 million 2019 figures showing the split between those arriving by air and land. From memory for Malaysian tourists it was in the 60/40 range.

They most definately don't, TAT uses exactly the same numbers as the Ministry of Sports and Tourism which is all tourists recorded entering at both land and air entry points. Fairly obvious when you consider the number of Malaysian tourists who visit via land borders.