Where are the Europeans? Hua Hin/Cha Am tourism officials urged to look elsewhere for next wave of tourists

[saengd]

25 minutes ago, ICELANDMAN said:

Because no data now after about ten years, probably because they don't want to say that there is a division to be made for two of the long-term tourists.

 

 

I've never seen data on this subject from Immigration, it's always come from University studies, credit card companies or other organisations supplying business intelligence for a fee - you really have to piece it together from a variety of sources. You would think that Immi. would be glad to release the data because it would help local businesses understand where and how to target their business, at which ethnic sector.....but alas!

[RobbyXNorway]

Watch Thai government come down hard on AirBnB next year to save the hotels and resorts. Going to be a bloodbaht (pun intended).

[zhounan]

following the austerity policies imposed to chase the neoliberal dream and globalism, europeans have no more money.
Those few who have a lot of money don't come to Thailand.

[ICELANDMAN]

33 minutes ago, zhounan said:

following the austerity policies imposed to chase the neoliberal dream and globalism, europeans have no more money.
Those few who have a lot of money don't come to Thailand.

I agree but this is very difficult to understand for the Thais that many consider the farang as mobile ATM

 

[saengd]

6 hours ago, chrisandsu said:

Out of curiosity is the cost of sick buffalo, house , cars and land- plastic daddy costs, essarns one parent family fund , factored into the cost of expats spending ? I can tell you for a fact no Indian or Chinese would be dumb enough to finance that lot . 

No person with any self respect could possibly call themself a true expat in Thailand until they have supported at least one bar girls family for a while and/or fallen for some version of the sick buffalo story at least once, it's an essential part of the apprenticeship program.

[ChipButty]

On 12/19/2019 at 12:52 PM, mokwit said:

Used to be an overwinter stay for Swedes. Maybe the requirements of an METV or OA are seen as making Thailand not worth the bother.

 

There may be a link between lack of 6 month contract property rentals and lack of ability to easily stay 6 months as a tourist over winter.

Ive noticed that down in Phuket over the last couple of years long term rentals seems to died away always  used to get people asking me, then you get owners asking if we get anyone, I just say to them I have not been asked for a long time

[ChipButty]

3 hours ago, RobbyXNorway said:

Watch Thai government come down hard on AirBnB next year to save the hotels and resorts. Going to be a bloodbaht (pun intended).

Doubt it, how many properties are owned by HI-SO people on airbnb?

[ChipButty]

6 hours ago, chrisandsu said:

Out of curiosity is the cost of sick buffalo, house , cars and land- plastic daddy costs, essarns one parent family fund , factored into the cost of expats spending ? I can tell you for a fact no Indian or Chinese would be dumb enough to finance that lot . 

No Thai is 

[ChipButty]

Do the Russians go to Hua Hin? seems a lot in Phuket this year

[jvs]

We do not go out a lot but we did 2 weeks ago with the family.

Dinner at the beach in Cha-am,i was very surprised by the lack of foreigners.

For a Friday evening it was really quiet.

Drove all up and down the strip and a few sois and there are just no tourists.

My gardener friend who has had a job as a waiter the last 7 years or so

is now home every night.His boss who owns the restaurant can handle the few customers all by herself.

[ICELANDMAN]

For the recently birthday my girlfriend we go Prachuap Khiri Khan on expensive hotel where go also on the restaurant evening and my girl friend think I have reserved to full restaurant because we are alone, but denied of course but I have think this the future the country with incompetent government.

[BritManToo]

7 hours ago, zhounan said:

following the austerity policies imposed to chase the neoliberal dream and globalism, europeans have no more money.
Those few who have a lot of money don't come to Thailand.

Plenty of Euros visiting Vietnam, it was packed out with them 3 months back.

[madmen]

7 hours ago, RobbyXNorway said:

Watch Thai government come down hard on AirBnB next year to save the hotels and resorts. Going to be a bloodbaht (pun intended).

Ahahah your joking right? They cant enforce it now so what will change ? Thais dont give a rats ass about the law, only money and they would need an extra 10,000 police chasing air bnb hosts throughout Thailand..aint gonna happen

Long live Air bnb , screw the hotels that are all run down anyway

 

[moonseeker]

TH has lost its AMAZING and EXOTIC a while ago. Paired with constant negative headlines in pretty much every respect allover the world, people are now heading for better places. I don't know any other holiday country with a barrage of nonstop discussions about tourism, foreigners and mostly negative contents. They have killed that part of tourism. MS>

[chrisandsu]

6 hours ago, saengd said:

No person with any self respect could possibly call themself a true expat in Thailand until they have supported at least one bar girls family for a while and/or fallen for some version of the sick buffalo story at least once, it's an essential part of the apprenticeship program.

Agree . What category of spending would this fall into ? I’d say the long reach of the retirement visa brigade goes much further then us younger guys could ever imagine . When I first came to Thailand 18 years ago as a 21 year old traveller issarn was a dry backward place that was pretty similar to how Cambodia is today  . The pensioners have done more for the economy of issarn then any government/charity programme could ever do ! The trickle down effect has worked very well there . 

[Traubert]

17 hours ago, saengd said:

In your earlier thread you wrote: "That is a pittance as the retirees are not that much importance for the tourist industry". But now it's clear that 3% of GDP is not really a pittance after all, you want to restrict the discussion to just Europeans because that's the title of this thread. Perhaps if you would have qualified your earlier statement more accurately and much earlier by stating that "European retiree spending was a mere pittance", I might have agreed with you. But you didn't, I sense a certain amount of late qualification, aka wriggling! Moving on..

 

In related news: the population of Thailand is 69 million and Chinese visitors, tourist or resident expat, are shown, on average, to be one of the highest spending groups of any that visit Thailand - "The Chinese now account for 57.48% of all tourists in Thailand. Chinese expenditure into Thailand is US$15,342,000,000 each year, which is more than any other nation. The average spend per day for a Chinese tourist in Thailand is US$192 – which is 53% more than the average Europeans US$125 daily spend". https://thethaiger.com/news/opinion/why-the-chinese-are-infinitely-more-important-than-western-tourists-to-thailand

 

Which ever way you cut the cake the contribution to the Thai economy by foreign expats is not small. I used figures from 2010 but didn't include costs that would have been included in a more complete spending analysis, maybe I'll model a more complete picture, just for fun!

 

 

Ok, excuse my wriggle, but I thought it was obvious so I didn't qualify it. I think you should try and bring your analysis up to date as it would be very interesting to see how the development of the contribution has evolved over the period with the various fluctuating factors, and clearly you have a good template already developed.

 

More power to your elbow sir. ????

[Denim]

Don't panic. He is currently in Ubon with his motorcycle doing an intensive course on :

 

' foreplay and how to keep your partner awake '

 

Will be back home in Hua Hin  shortly to tell us all about it.

[simtemple]

Has to be something wrong with a destination that does not enjoy repeat business. Maybe experience of poor service & being ripped off have somthing to do with it. Alternatively it could be fear of being killed on a Thai road by a sleepy tourist bus driver? 

[saengd]

2 hours ago, chrisandsu said:

Agree . What category of spending would this fall into ? I’d say the long reach of the retirement visa brigade goes much further then us younger guys could ever imagine . When I first came to Thailand 18 years ago as a 21 year old traveller issarn was a dry backward place that was pretty similar to how Cambodia is today  . The pensioners have done more for the economy of issarn then any government/charity programme could ever do ! The trickle down effect has worked very well there . 

An excellent observation and perfectly true. Twenty years ago Buriram and Surin for example were extensions of the refugee camps on the border, the airport used to open just for the flight to Bangkok and was an event that locals came to witness out of novelty value. Every pole dancer on Nana was from Udon or Ubon. Expat pensioners looking to escape the financial drain of Bangkok and Phuket changed all that, for a while there they were the new millionaires, the biggest house in the village usually belonged to the farang expat and their ex-pole dancing luvely. Expat pensioners saw the Issan housing stock renewed, the local population taught English and an ad-hoc system of social security implemented, what a great deal for gov.th.

 

 

 

[Chelseafan]

On 12/19/2019 at 5:52 AM, mokwit said:

Used to be an overwinter stay for Swedes.

Sweden becoming less cold? I blame global warming

[Chelseafan]

20 hours ago, saengd said:

In related news: the population of Thailand is 69 million and Chinese visitors, tourist or resident expat, are shown, on average, to be one of the highest spending groups of any that visit Thailand - "The Chinese now account for 57.48% of all tourists in Thailand. Chinese expenditure into Thailand is US$15,342,000,000 each year, which is more than any other nation. The average spend per day for a Chinese tourist in Thailand is US$192 – which is 53% more than the average Europeans US$125 daily spend". https://thethaiger.com/news/opinion/why-the-chinese-are-infinitely-more-important-than-western-tourists-to-thailand

 

 

The figures are highly suspicious, How are they getting to $192 for the Chinese tourist and how do they know that its 53% more than the Europeans ?

 

Are they taking into account my Air'B'B stay, my daily 2000 baht short-time, my 4000 daily bar bill, my food expenditure etc etc.

 

Yes, I agree that Chinese tourism brings in more money but I would be amazed if per capita they out-spend Americans and Europeans. I suspect that the figures quoted have been taken from credit card transactions and therefore totally skew spending by demographics.

 

 

[saengd]

3 hours ago, Chelseafan said:

The figures are highly suspicious, How are they getting to $192 for the Chinese tourist and how do they know that its 53% more than the Europeans ?

 

Are they taking into account my Air'B'B stay, my daily 2000 baht short-time, my 4000 daily bar bill, my food expenditure etc etc.

 

Yes, I agree that Chinese tourism brings in more money but I would be amazed if per capita they out-spend Americans and Europeans. I suspect that the figures quoted have been taken from credit card transactions and therefore totally skew spending by demographics.

 

 

There has been a number of these studies/surveys done and reported via the internet, some by credit card companies, some by TAT, some by private groups and some by universities etc. No single spending survey encompasses all spenders, they only take samples so you really have to look across several samples to get an answer that is broadly correct. What appears to be consistent across them all is that the Chinese spend more per day on average but they also tend to stay for fewer days, Europeans we are told spend less but stay longer. But because the volume of Chinese is so high, they take the top spending spot. That makes sense to me since the travel time and distance from China is relatively short whereas travel from the West is longer and typically means a longer stay in order to pay back the effort and expense of the holiday.

 

TAT will probably have the most reliable number although few people seem to get to see them. They have a sampling program whereby the same several thousand tourist related outlets report data every week and this is repeated all over the country. Those samples provide a pretty reliable picture of changes to spending patterns. Hotels for example report the number of foreign guests, details of their length of stay, country of origin, food and beverage bills etc. I imagine that for every guest that whose spending habits are reported, another amount is added to include ancillary spending locally and that would include your short time visits etc and bar bills, on average! As in the case of the exit poll samples that predicted the outcome of the recent UK election, sampling can be pretty accurate and reliable. 

[RJRS1301]

There is NO CONSISTENT narrative in Thailand regarding tourism

This one advises looking elsewhere for toursits

TAT hire a fortune teller to assist increase numbers

TAT in another release say they on target for 39 million arrivals

Can the left hand please make itself known to the right hand

Silos seem to working effectively in communications

 

Make WH communication look efficient and true

 

[saengd]

Regarding spend per day etc., the following from another thread:

 

Tourist Arrivals x Average Length of Stay x Average Daily Spend.

 

China - 9,847 x 8 (= 78,776 Tourist days) x 193 = 15,204 million

Europe - 6,322 x 17 (= 107,474 Tourist days) x 125 = 13,434 million.

 

The above was for a sample period only.

 

 

 

[ChipButty]

I was just talking with a Swedish woman this morning here on holiday and I said to her we dont see many Swedes here no more and her reply was most of her friends dont come to Phuket anymore for many reasons

[sirocco]

yes, and what are these reasons ?????

[mokwit]

18 hours ago, ChipButty said:

Ive noticed that down in Phuket over the last couple of years long term rentals seems to died away always  used to get people asking me, then you get owners asking if we get anyone, I just say to them I have not been asked for a long time

My CBD (BKK not Hua Hin but for sake of exampling the same malaise) condo building is empty for this time of year. I think people coming here to stay for a few months a year/couple of years were a major source of bouyancy for the condo/apartment rental market which feeds that rent into the local economy because the owners are in large part Thais who buy condos for rental income. Previously you could get a 1 yr non O, multiple entry tourist visa, ED visa or even go to the border once a month. All that has been closed off. A comfortably off retired friend who comes every year for 6 months to stay in a condo he owns was not happy that all he could get this year was a 2+1 month tourist visa. I didn't mention that if he went to Vientienne without an appointment he would be turned away and Savannakhet might think one tourist visa per 6 months was enough. Another comfortably off retired friend who came for six months and rented all year is not coming anymore and has thus cancelled the rental. Another who owns and comes 3x year for 2 months is not happy about the increased documentation for his SETV. All are over 50 and no problem with METV/ OA financial requirements. Thailand is not so attractive that all those not vested via ownership are going to jump through the long stay hoops even if they qualify. The one who comes 3x a year is concerned he might be refused entry. That is the message that is out there and being picked up by wealthy educated retirees.

 

Bottom line is that this is another example of Thailand changing the deal on people - e.g people who bought a condo on the expectation they could stay 6 months without OA / METV hassle or border/consul runs now that multiple entry visa TV is gone.

 

Ultimately if tenants who can sign a 6 month or 1 year contract become thinner on the ground as they are, buildings that previously voted to ban AirBnB will vote to allow it unless owner occupiers are the majority. Otherwise, no tenants will mean no communal fees paid. Buildings that were liveable will become unliveable and buyers of condos will become fewer as you will be buying an apartment in a cross between a refugee camp and a youth hostel and will on;y be able to visit depending on how much time you can get a visa for.

 

 

[mokwit]

18 minutes ago, sirocco said:

yes, and what are these reasons ?????

Hotels full of Russians has been given as a reason for being unhappy with destination choice (so much for multiculturalism and enrichment when it is on their doorstep - People slamming doors at 3am are exhibiting their cultural "vibrancy").

[Chelseafan]

6 hours ago, saengd said:

There has been a number of these studies/surveys done and reported via the internet, some by credit card companies, some by TAT, some by private groups and some by universities etc. No single spending survey encompasses all spenders, they only take samples so you really have to look across several samples to get an answer that is broadly correct. What appears to be consistent across them all is that the Chinese spend more per day on average but they also tend to stay for fewer days, Europeans we are told spend less but stay longer. But because the volume of Chinese is so high, they take the top spending spot. That makes sense to me since the travel time and distance from China is relatively short whereas travel from the West is longer and typically means a longer stay in order to pay back the effort and expense of the holiday.

 

TAT will probably have the most reliable number although few people seem to get to see them. They have a sampling program whereby the same several thousand tourist related outlets report data every week and this is repeated all over the country. Those samples provide a pretty reliable picture of changes to spending patterns. Hotels for example report the number of foreign guests, details of their length of stay, country of origin, food and beverage bills etc. I imagine that for every guest that whose spending habits are reported, another amount is added to include ancillary spending locally and that would include your short time visits etc and bar bills, on average! As in the case of the exit poll samples that predicted the outcome of the recent UK election, sampling can be pretty accurate and reliable. 

Agreed with you on length of stay and that the Chinese are the biggest spenders by volume but I'm sorry, I really don't believe they are per capita.

 

If the figures are gathered via surveys then I very much doubt that the interviewer is asking the right questions. I mean, how on earth do you ask a Sex-pat about their daily spend. "Excuse me sir, how much do you spend on Boom Boom?".

I agree that hotels will report tourist details but how many of us really eat all our meals at the hotel? Ancillary spend is what it's all about and I can just see someone at the TAT saying, "just throw in 1000 baht, my sister say that farangs are cheap charlies"

 

The other problem I have wit these figures is the difference between mean and median. If 9 people spend 1000 baht and 1 person spends 100,000 baht then the average is 10,900.

 

The TAT figures have always been questionable, only just recently they mentioned that Indians are spending 10,000 baht per day.

 

[observer90210]

Where are the EU's ? Don't know...ask the Chinese or the Indians maybe ?