Do you really care about lower # vistiors to Thailand?

[The Theory]

On 4/11/2019 at 10:58 AM, watcharacters said:

 

If you care about lower numbers

This is the equation that you asked for: Less Chinese tourists = less noise pollution.

Edited April 12, 2019 by The Theory

[khunPer]

On 4/11/2019 at 5:58 AM, watcharacters said:

If you care about lower numbers can you explain why it matters to you?

Number of foreign incoming tourists in 2017: 35.6 million

Number of foreign incoming tourists in 2018: 38.0 million

 

Hard to see the number of visitors are lower...????

 

However, the visitors are changing from relative (in percentage) high number of Westerners, to a high percentage of Asia tourists, mainly Chinese. The Asian tourists spend less days in Thailand than the Westerners, often 4 to 6 days (according to various news articles), whilst Westerners typically stay for an average of two weeks.

 

Furthermore, many Westerners begin to prefer private villas for hotel accommodation, anything from Airbnb to high end villas for a private group or expanded family tours, where a private pool villa can be cheaper, or similar priced, as same number of hotel rooms.

 

Tourism habits are changing, but number of foreign visitors is up.

????

[ncc1701d]

Agree with KP. The average mainlander does not spend the same way as a westerner. They have very specific tour groups doing very specific things. Going to “walking street” is a tourist attraction to view (like the coliseum in Rome), and not a place to stay and piss it up. 

 

At a guess I would say that attitude may change once the younger mainlander finds travel easier and they move away from dedicated tour groups. Which I also wonder who owns most of them / where the money is going.

 

on the whole, it seems to reflect sentiment and smaller businesses are finding it very hard. At least the small number of Thai people I know about are finding things harder.

 

[RobMuir]

10 minutes ago, khunPer said:

Number of foreign incoming tourists in 2017: 35.6 million

Number of foreign incoming tourists in 2018: 38.0 million

 

Hard to see the number of visitors are lower...????

 

However, the visitors are changing from relative (in percentage) high number of Westerners, to a high percentage of Asia tourists, mainly Chinese. The Asian tourists spend less days in Thailand than the Westerners, often 4 to 6 days (according to various news articles), whilst Westerners typically stay for an average of two weeks.

 

Furthermore, many Westerners begin to prefer private villas for hotel accommodation, anything from Airbnb to high end villas for a private group or expanded family tours, where a private pool villa can be cheaper, or similar priced, as same number of hotel rooms.

 

Tourism habits are changing, but number of foreign visitors is up.

????

Apart from the dodgy Thaivisa survey and a couple of beer bars and restaurants with average overpriced food is anywhere else reporting falling tourist numbers? 

It is a complete myth.

[Pattaya46]

5 minutes ago, ncc1701d said:

Agree with KP. The average mainlander does not spend the same way as a westerner. They have very specific tour groups doing very specific things. //

I would disagree...

It was still true just a few years ago, but Chinese tourists are changing too. In Pattaya we saw more and more of them traveling in couple or very small groups (3-6 people). They do not depend of a big group or of a big bus. They rent mostly condos, using Airbnb or similar, for rather short stays (1 week or less?) and then they move to another location/city. They have some money to spend seeing the many shop-bags they often have when they return in their condos.

I think there is now some Chinese of "middle-class" who are not really different (as tourists) of the Western tourists.

[khunPer]

1 minute ago, RobMuir said:

Apart from the dodgy Thaivisa survey and a couple of beer bars and restaurants with average overpriced food is anywhere else reporting falling tourist numbers? 

It is a complete myth.

Actually, it may feel like the number of tourists is falling. Little less Westerners – might be due to stronger baht, combined with change in vacation habits – but a relative high decrease in percentage of total number of incoming tourists, compared to before where the total number 20-years ago was around 7 million. When folks stay for one week instead of two weeks, the number of tourists staying in the country at same time might be little lower – but still a lot more than 20-years ago – even the total number of incoming tourists is increasing.

 

And then the change of visitors, where Chinese – and maybe also other Asian nationalities – might travel more in all inclusive groups, and therefore not visit the small local restaurants and bars, where Thaivisa posters might be frequent visitors, and thereby notice a decrease in guests ,and listen to the owner's complains about business.

 

Statically – and we don't have better figurs than the official stats – 10.6 million of the 38 million incoming 2018-tourists were Chinese, and 4.1 million Malays. Other major nationalities are in numbers from 1 million (USA 1.1) to 1.8 million (South Korea and Laos). Indians were 1.5 million, but are expected to increase to 10 million within a few years. Do we know what Indian tourists prefers and their holiday habits..?

 

TAT made an interesting graphic expression of 7 major destinations by province, and their 3 greatest number of visitors; note its provinces, so #7 Surat Thani is for example Koh Samui & Koh Phangan, and #2 Chonburi include Pattaya; the others are 1. Bangkok, 3. Phuket, 4. Chiang Mai, 5. Krabi, and 6. Songkhla (Hat Yai)....

[ianezy0]

 

Is tourism realty down. Are we basing this on bars not being busy. I see a change in demographic, more Chinese, Indian and less American, European. Thai tourism is more targeting these countries. According to Wiki and other sites (as below) numbers continue to increase. Living in Pattaya I see a large co tangent of Chinese, in my co do block, in the city as a whole. Huge amount of buses day and night and the paragliding business has expanded. 

Just putting it out there...

Year	Arrivals	% change
2030	79,349,668	Forecast[44]:5
Jan-Feb 2019	7,291,492	[45]
2018	38,277,300	7.54%
2017	35,381,210	8.57%
2016	32,588,303	8.91%[46]
2015	29,881,091	20.44%
2014	24,809,683	6.54%
2013	26,546,725	18.77%
2012	22,353,903	15.98%
2011	19,230,470	20.67%
2010	15,936,400	12.63%
2009	14,149,841	2.98%
2008	14,584,220	0.83%
2007	14,464,228	4.65%
2006	13,821,802	20.01%
2005	11,516,936	n/a

[ianezy0]

56 minutes ago, RobMuir said:

Apart from the dodgy Thaivisa survey and a couple of beer bars and restaurants with average overpriced food is anywhere else reporting falling tourist numbers? 

It is a complete myth.

Sorry Rob, I posted similar without noticing your post ????

interesting that we have a similar view

[RobMuir]

1 hour ago, ianezy0 said:

Sorry Rob, I posted similar without noticing your post ????

interesting that we have a similar view

Similar view because we look at facts, numbers. 

 

Others seem to make stuff up, and it is always negative towards the Thais. 

Which strikes me as weird, why live here or even comment on a thai website if you hate Thailand and all the thai people.

 Go back.

 

I am also noticing that the news here is also biased against the Thais and if it isn’t negative there is a lot of sarcasm. 

 

There is a lot of good and interesting stuff happening, it is a great country but not much of that reported here. Me and the other 40 million tourists like it here.

 

And Brexit threads seem to be most popular. I can’t see the relevance to be honest.

[Ulic]

Does not really affect me but I do like to see businesses doing well. I really don't like to see closed restaurants and shops. It all leads to urban decay and even poorer services than already exist.

[sunnyboy2018]

On 4/11/2019 at 11:21 AM, watcharacters said:

 

I fully agree with you, jackdd.

 

That's why I posted the question.   I don't want businesses to cease operation  but as this forum continually posts the topic it seems  it should be a matter of concern to the expat who lives in Thailand.     Oh my goodness the tourists numbers are down.    Run to the hills..

 

I'm fully Ok to have less crowded roads and restaurants/bars as long as businesses can survive.

 

 

Absolutely.  I remember the glory days before places like koh samui were over developed.  Pattaya is better in the quiet season.

[sunnyboy2018]

3 hours ago, RobMuir said:

Similar view because we look at facts, numbers. 

 

Others seem to make stuff up, and it is always negative towards the Thais. 

Which strikes me as weird, why live here or even comment on a thai website if you hate Thailand and all the thai people.

 Go back.

 

I am also noticing that the news here is also biased against the Thais and if it isn’t negative there is a lot of sarcasm. 

 

There is a lot of good and interesting stuff happening, it is a great country but not much of that reported here. Me and the other 40 million tourists like it here.

 

And Brexit threads seem to be most popular. I can’t see the relevance to be honest.

I'm afraid we have to tolerate the thai haters and thai bashers. Its TV forum tradition. The only thing we can do is flag comments as derogatory and hope to get them deleted. But I think many of the thai haters fall into different categories: people not here; people who have never been here; people trapped here in bad marriages; feminists; evangelists and people suffering from depression.

[RocketDog]

On 4/11/2019 at 12:08 PM, Pravda said:

If you truly live here I imagine you should be concerned. More people means higher prices for the condo you bought, better infrastructure and food options, shopping malls....

 

Personally I don't care as I'm not invested here and could care less if there's a civil war tomorrow. 

Could or couldn't care less? I'm confused .

[baansgr]

On 4/11/2019 at 12:21 PM, watcharacters said:

 

I fully agree with you, jackdd.

 

That's why I posted the question.   I don't want businesses to cease operation  but as this forum continually posts the topic it seems  it should be a matter of concern to the expat who lives in Thailand.     Oh my goodness the tourists numbers are down.    Run to the hills..

 

I'm fully Ok to have less crowded roads and restaurants/bars as long as businesses can survive.

 

 

Businesses will survive if they are run proffessionly overing a product that is saught by consumers. Beer bars and expat restos with greedy ridiculous prices and mark ups of 300% on a bottle of beer or 250 baht for a stir fried rice deserve to fold.

[RocketDog]

On 4/12/2019 at 9:13 AM, RobMuir said:

It’s absurd how seriously TV takes their survey of a few hundred members and regards it as a reliable cross section of expats and tourists in all of Thailand.

They are comparing it to last years survey of a few hundred people.

 

The tourist numbers hit 40,000,000 last year. Tourist numbers down or just TV numbers down?

 

One thing that stood out to me was how poor most TV members are living on the bread line and how the majority claim they are getting ready to leave because they can not figure out how to fill in a couple of forms at Immigration.

Nonsense.

 

I will believe your Embassy figures of 3% and the TAT figures over a dodgy TV survey of which many of the participants don’t even live here.

 

Tourist numbers are up, and the trend has been up for several decades. A couple of old beer bars going out of business is a poor indicator.

The airports are flat out.

I agree with both your comments regarding the expats that were so near the monthly line that they have to leave and the survey significance.

 

I suppose it's normal for any minority to overestimate their numbers, value, significance, contributions, and influence with respect to the majority. 

 

I would like to think that I add more to the country than the average tourist does. That may or may not be true, but I suspect there are orders of magnitude more tourists/tourist spending than that of the expat community's. 

 

As depressing as it may be to some,  I cannot believe that Thailand would suffer much if we all left one night.

 

[morrobay]

On 4/12/2019 at 1:04 PM, RobMuir said:

Apart from the dodgy Thaivisa survey and a couple of beer bars and restaurants with average overpriced food is anywhere else reporting falling tourist numbers? 

It is a complete myth.

Sure the numbers may be up -according to TAT. But the more important tourist-days may be down: take 10 Westerners that stay for 14 days. Equals 140 tourist days. Take 20 Asians/Indians that stay 5 days equaling 100 tourist days. And also it seems to be consensus that Westerners spend more/day.