Thai media upbeat saying 7,600+ "tourists" visited Thailand in January

 

Picture: Daily News

 

Thai media quoting figures from the tourism ministry were extraordinarily upbeat about the prospects for tourism recovery in Thailand.

 

But the devil was in the details, notes Thaivisa. 

 

In a banner headline Daily News said that 7,600 tourists arrived in January. This they said was a good sign for the country's return to mass tourism.

 

With more countries allowing their nationals to travel and vaccination increasing the signs were positive, they suggested.

 

This despite the fact that Thailand was in the grip of the second wave of the pandemic in January, they noted.

 

However, there were no pictures of these tourists on the beaches or sightseeing.

 

It was perhaps poignant that the article had the staid frontage of the ministry of tourism and sports building as its one and only picture.

 

The tourists of the headline were in fact people still coming on the STV (special tourist visa) packages, Elite cardholders and businessmen.

 

Hardly your run-of-the-mill tourist. 

 

There were 7,694 of them.

 

Further reality sank in as the details were given.

 

This was 99.80% down on last year's January figure. 

 

The straw clutching positivity still continued with a comment that January's figure was well up on tourism arrivals in the third and fourth quarters of last year. 

 

So who came in January?

 

The largest group were from Europe - 4,072 people mostly Germans, British, French, Russians and eastern Europeans. 

 

East Asia with 1,749 was the second largest group comprising people from China, ASEAN nations, South Korea, Japan and Hong Kong. 

 

In third were the Americas with 1,044 visitors from the US, Canada, Brazil and Argentina in particular. 

 

There were 293 visitors from the Middle East, 250 from Oceania, 165 from South Asia and 121 from Africa. 

 

Source: Daily News

 

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What's 7600 x 12?

I know girls in Pattaya who have had more tourists than that.

7600 wow, wow, wow, bit different from when they used to spout off about 39 million init.

According to TAT's own figures for 2018....that is the equivalent of 90 minutes worth of arrivals...some way to go!

Thinking TV is just trolling its users....These tourism related topics follow the samme pattern : some absolutely unbelievable crazy f...d statements from TAT, Anutin or thai media, then TV users waiting at the corner....

 

It's getting boring.

 

For someone who is speaking&reading thai and follows thai media, I would like to ask, are questions&news related to foreign travel and quarantine, important for mainstream thai media?

the only tourists I can recount are some 58 koreans on golf course quarantine in phuket, staying in around 30k baht per night sri panva resort.

They came the previous sunday, 21.2, so there was no tourists who arrived in january. 

https://www.thephuketnews.com/resort-staff-must-stay-on-site-during-phuket-villa-quarantine-79135.php

Someone needs to work back from a realistic plan which copes with 30m+ tourists which is clearly not going to include quarantine so the first item on the agenda is how and when are they going to remove, not reduce, quarantine.

 

If they say in 6 months time, then all demand will fall leading up to that point because no-one will want to pay for quarantine and the hi-so hotel owners will not allow that as they'll have zero income, so it has to pretty much disappear overnight.

 

This could force a reduced interim quarantine, which would eventually be easier to remove totally but 10 days is still too long as is 7 days really. 5 days might just float, together with a test before and a test on day 4, results on day 5. Dropping 5 days to zero is far far easier than from a much higher number and there would be little need to give much advance warning.

 

The costs would be far lower, perhaps 5/10k at the bottom end up to 10/20k at the 5* level.

 

There is no market for insisting everyone is vaccinated. I simply cannot see that making any sense but hey ho, this is the Land Of Lunatics so perhaps that is exactly the bright plan they will come up with next !

6 hours ago, webfact said:

In a banner headline Daily News said that 7,600 tourists arrived in January.

Yeah okay...

99.8% down, that's the only takeaway of value from this article.

 

More likely that they were business people, who needed to go in person to Thailand for a reason.  If they were

travelling for leisure, they are likely still in country, because of the quarantine period, as well as their holiday time.

  Wow less than 8000, is pethatic for that time of year, huh...

Geezer

It's ok each one was a multi trillionaire ????

13 hours ago, dcnx said:

I know girls in Pattaya who have had more tourists than that.

Pretties ?

 

Trying to polish a curd comes to mind.

Seeing a lot more Youtube travel vloggers showing up, recent arrivals documenting their process, flights, arrival and ASQ, over the past month.

 

It's actually more than I would have imagined, but believe the December figure was 6,556, so makes sense. ~ 245 per day.