USD is down about 20% from just a few years ago, and price of goods and services are up over the last few years.

There are more cost effective places to visit.

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On 1/22/2019 at 2:05 PM, ocddave said:

I would love to the see the chart that shows who spends more money while in Thailand, just because 10 million Chinese come, doesn't mean they spend more than say 1-2 million people from Western Countries. 

So true. I have a Thai friend here in Samui, very very wealthy lady, who works all of the Walking Streets on Samui every week. She told me last week that Lamai was full of Chinese but that they weren't spending any money, only looking and taking photos. They're here on one of the zero dollar tours where everything is paid in advance. They don't spend any money outside of the resort where they are staying. My GF is the spa director at a 5-star resort. She tells me that they are now full, having only been at 15% occupancy until now, but that they are full of Chinese who don't spend money, don't show up on time for their appointments at the spa, and complain about everything without ever tipping and always making as big a mess as possible. She tells me that the best clients are from the US and Canada, followed by Europe. The only Chinese that are 'okay' are those from Singapore and Hong Kong.

7 minutes ago, GalaxyMan said:

So true. I have a Thai friend here in Samui, very very wealthy lady, who works all of the Walking Streets on Samui every week. She told me last week that Lamai was full of Chinese but that they weren't spending any money, only looking and taking photos. They're here on one of the zero dollar tours where everything is paid in advance. They don't spend any money outside of the resort where they are staying. My GF is the spa director at a 5-star resort. She tells me that they are now full, having only been at 15% occupancy until now, but that they are full of Chinese who don't spend money, don't show up on time for their appointments at the spa, and complain about everything without ever tipping and always making as big a mess as possible. She tells me that the best clients are from the US and Canada, followed by Europe. The only Chinese that are 'okay' are those from Singapore and Hong Kong.

Not so true I know a guy who runs a survey business trusted by everyone for years.

https://www.nielsen.com/content/dam/nielsenglobal/cn/docs/Outbound Chinese Tourism and Consumption Trends.pdf

 

Perhaps google would get you a better idea of actual expenditures from different countries as opposed to anecdotal anti Chinese nonsense.

2 hours ago, marcusarelus said:

Not so true I know a guy who runs a survey business trusted by everyone for years.

https://www.nielsen.com/content/dam/nielsenglobal/cn/docs/Outbound Chinese Tourism and Consumption Trends.pdf

 

Perhaps google would get you a better idea of actual expenditures from different countries as opposed to anecdotal anti Chinese nonsense.

With respect to Koh Samui, I think I'll take the word of the people who are actually working in the service industry day to day, their observations and perceptions, over a Nielsen poll. LMAO. Nielsen?!?!?!

18 hours ago, AtoZ said:

If you like high-end 5* hotels, fancy food and drinks then even Maldives all inclusive resorts would cost you about the same as Thailand.

Sorry, not true.

 

I've lived in the Maldives for the last year and it's incredibly expensive, and if you want to go to the resorts even more so, and I get locals discounts.

8 hours ago, marcusarelus said:

Not so true I know a guy who runs a survey business trusted by everyone for years.

https://www.nielsen.com/content/dam/nielsenglobal/cn/docs/Outbound Chinese Tourism and Consumption Trends.pdf

 

Perhaps google would get you a better idea of actual expenditures from different countries as opposed to anecdotal anti Chinese nonsense.

A couple of things from your link:

Quote

In December 2017, Nielsen conducted an extensive quantitative online survey with 2,009 residents from Chinese mainland and 613 non-Chinese residents as its research subjects, all of whom had travelled overseas in the past 12 months and plan to travel overseas in the next 12 months.

How can you trust anything said from someone in China who is under continual observation and subject to adjustments to their social credit score for giving the "wrong" answers? 

 

Quote

This survey on Chinese tourists' overseas spending and payment was a one-for-one in-depth online survey by Nielsen, commissioned by Alipay.

Despite any disclaimers, Nielsen's results are highly questionable if the person benefiting from the survey's glowing report of Chinese spending using Alipay is Jack Ma and Alibaba Group.

16 hours ago, zydeco said:

A couple of things from your link:

How can you trust anything said from someone in China who is under continual observation and subject to adjustments to their social credit score for giving the "wrong" answers? 

 

Despite any disclaimers, Nielsen's results are highly questionable if the person benefiting from the survey's glowing report of Chinese spending using Alipay is Jack Ma and Alibaba Group.

So you trust nothing from China but offer no alternatives to a trusted business providing results for many years to companies who pay for accurate information?

 

Anecdotal evidence is not a viable source of actionable information. 

22 hours ago, GalaxyMan said:

With respect to Koh Samui, I think I'll take the word of the people who are actually working in the service industry day to day, their observations and perceptions, over a Nielsen poll. LMAO. Nielsen?!?!?!

You have a couple of anti Chinese bigots trying to tell anyone who will listen that mainland Chinese don't spend money.  No one believes you as the vast majority of evidence suggests otherwise and your small sample of anecdotal evidence is useless.  There are many accurate sources of information of the spending habits to tourists on the net go look them up.