Thailand Says Its Tourism Sector May Not Recover Until 2026

[Poet]

8 hours ago, gaynorch1 said:

Yes great ideas! And kids? They don’t get vaccines (yet). That means only singles and couples then.

Thank you. I usually qualify this prediction by saying that the airlines will only carry adults and crew who are vaccinated, omitting kids. I forgot to include that detail in this thread.

For some reason, during this pandemic, the fact that kids are at negligible risk of dying from Covid has been generally misinterpreted to mean that kids cannot transmit Covid. That was always biologically illiterate but I suppose no one quite had the energy to enforce mask-wearing on kids in public.

So, this blindspot regarding kids is likely to carry over to vaccinations, especially as most countries (apart from the US) are reluctant to vaccinate kids - I think that parallels the differing attitudes towards medicating schoolkids, something that is not done as often in  Europe at it is in the US. I think the US airlines have also been far more strict in insisting that kids wear masks.

So, it is likely that international, longhaul airlines and most countries will all converge upon the same policy, probably that minors don't have to be vaccinated. Perhaps the rule will be that 16 and up must be vaccinated. Perhaps 12 and up (high school / secondary school age) if various countries start encountering more vaccine hesitancy and need the additionals numbers to reach the 60-70% level they need to get active case levels below 100 per million population.

[Fex Bluse]

22 hours ago, Poet said:

Every survey in the West shows that there is massive pent up demand for exotic foreign travel, and the savings to pay for it.

Thailand could starting ramping up back to mass tourism this summer if they simply announce that they will accept verifiably fully-innoculated visitors on the pre-pandemic visa terms (i.e. no tests, no quarantine, no paperwork, no special insurance etc). Each visitor would need to have credible verification that they received their final jab at least two weeks prior.

400 million people are fully-vaccinated, while another 400m have received a first jab and are waiting for their second. The supply is growing and we expect to have a billion fully-vaccinated humans by the end of June.

The current hold up is the official verification schemes. Israel launched theirs in February, the UK launched theirs earlier this month, and the EU are beta-testing theirs, individual governments will probably roll it out during July. All national schemes will provide the basic info that Thailand needs to know that the holder is not a biological threat to Thailand: date of shot(s) and type of vaccine(s).

To have any sort of high season this year, Thailand should announce during June that, from the second half of the year (July 1st), the doors are wide open to fully-vaccinated tourists who arrive on planes carrying only fully-vaccinated passengers and crew. They won't get anywhere near 2019 levels this year but it will be a start, will give them some sort of high season, will kickstart a complicated industry that has stalled badly, and will pre-empt regional competitors eager to leapfrog them.

 

 

Problem with this approach will inevitably be that vaccinated foreign tourists will still be carrying on occasion the virus. Maybe more virulent strains. Maybe even previously unknowns strains.

 

These can still start deadly clusters in the unvaccinated population.

Therefore the key is really that the 50 million or so Thais of age need to be fully vaccinated..

 

And we can all guess how long that will take. I'm guessing 3 years from when they actually start in earnest

 

[Poet]

8 hours ago, Ty Hareways said:

When bars reopen and quarantine is not required, tourists will travel to hotspots like Phuket,Samui,Pattaya,etc in their droves believe me.

Absolutely. The vast majority of people in the West are no longer worried about Covid, certainly not now that the most vulnerable are vaccinated. The continuing tone of doom in the mainstream media is wildly out-of-sync with public opinion, they exist in a different reality now.

 

8 hours ago, Ty Hareways said:

People are itching to get back to thai, fact is very few locals want them as they're scared to death of catching covid.

Yeah, the junta set the stage for that. Lacking any real democratic mandate, they were latching onto anti-foreigner populist sentiment long before the pandemic. They amplified it once the pandemic started, with gems such as Anutin convincing the public that farangs were the problem while completely ignoring the massive, uncontrolled flow of millions of migrants across Thailand's almost 5,000 KM of land borders. White faces are easy to spot, easy to feel threatened by, but the guy beside you on the bus, who looks Thai but arrived from Myanmar last week, is far more likely to infect you.

The junta, now facing possible annihilation as the economy falters, must backtrack and introduce the idea that fully-vaccinated tourists from countries with negligible levels of infection are not a danger. Just watch, this is exactly what is going to happen over the next month or so.

[Jeffr2]

It might recover faster than they think.

 

https://www.travelweekly.com/Caribbean-Travel/Insights/One-Caribbean-specialists-comeback?utm_source=eNewsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=eltrdb&oly_enc_id=1305B1422478I9F

 

"April was my third best month in six years," Linda Welch, the owner and CEO of Blue Ash Travel in Blue Ash, Ohio, told me recently.

"My clients are fully vaccinated and ready to pack up and go," she said. "Although there is still a fair amount of uncertainty regarding international travel, most of them are itching to travel and are impressed with the safety protocols in the high-end resorts in the Caribbean."

[Poet]

1 hour ago, Fex Bluse said:

Problem with this approach will inevitably be that vaccinated foreign tourists will still be carrying on occasion the virus.

With viruses, you can never be 100% sure of anything, but the probabilities are astonishingly low.

Remember, we are talking about the second half of the year, when many more advanced countries will have caught up to where Israel currently is: 60% fully-vaccinated, well below the "zero covid" active cases level of 100 per million of population, and an R0 of 0.75, meaning that their active case level will continue to drop.

The lesson seems to be that good vaccines really do start to wipe out the Coronavirus once you get to around 60%. That is lower than we expected, but is probably assisted by a certain amount of natural immunity among those who have already been infected. That will apply to even more to, say, the UK than it does to Israel.

Remember, the vast majority of those who make up the tiny 60 active cases per million in Israel are probably from the 40% who are either not vaccinated, or who have only had one shot so far. We are talking about Thailand accepting people who received their final shot at least two weeks prior to stepping onto the plane.

Peer-reviewed studies established several months ago that all the authorized Western vaccines not only make you more resistant to getting infected but, also, reduce transmission by at least two thirds. This was expected, but it was good to have it confirmed by multiple studies. Certain members here, for mystifying reasons of their own, competely ignore that key detail.

So, if a passenger was spectacularly unlucky and managed to be one of the fewer than 1 in a hundred thousand fully-vaccinated people to get infected, his ability to spread that to his fellow passengers would be extremely low and, in turn, their ability to transmit it to anyone else would be extremely low. This is why the R0 in Israel has dipped below 1.0.

Now, let's imagine that, for every million of these fully-vaccinated tourists that arrive in Thailand, 10 are infected but transmitting it about two-thirds less than an unvaccinated infected person would. That is a wildly low level of biological hazard.

Some members here are unable to think in terms of relative risk but the most relevant comparison here is between those ten low-transmitting infected tourists and the tens of thousands of infected, unvaccinated humans crossing the borders from Myanmar, Laos, and Cambodia every month.

Unskilled, poorly-educated South East Asian migrants in Thailand often live in cramped accomodation, travel on public transport, and work in poorly-ventilated factories or markets, in close proximity to hundreds of other workers and customers. For every one Thai infected by a tourist from a "zero covid" country, tens of thousands would be infected by migrants from countries with raging pandemics of their own. 
 

1 hour ago, Fex Bluse said:

Maybe more virulent strains. Maybe even previously unknowns strains.

Much of the hysteria around the various strains is orchestrated to encourage Western citizens to become too relaxed as the summer arrives and it becomes clear that the vaccines have been wonderfully effective. If you think back on all the variant scares, including the recent Indian one, isn't it funny that they have all turned out to be nowhere near as bad as initially reported?

So far, despite loudly-amplified fears, the Western vaccines have proved to be effective against every variant. My understanding, from reading actual experts as opposed to tabloid websites, is that it was always unlikely that they would not be - viruses mutate, but they don't mutate that much.

Perhaps a future strain will be a problem but that is something you deal with if it happens. You don't destroy the world economy over some Science Fiction possibility.
 

1 hour ago, Fex Bluse said:

the 50 million or so Thais of age need to be fully vaccinated.

They will be, eventually, but, in the meantime, do you understand how many Thais will die, in this country with no real social welfare system, if you completely destroy their economy?

Are you aware that, at this stage, many families have already exhausted their emergency funds?

Long before the pandemic, Thailand already had the highest levels of personal debt in the world. Families who had nothing to do with tourism relied on customers who did. Entire families were supported by Swiss men with low IQs who were "sponsoring" their daughters, but who have now stopped because they don't know when they will be able to bring their schüblig to Nakhon Ratchasima again.

My partner usually sells online to thousands of women all over Thailand every day. This month, her viewing numbers remain as high as ever but sales have fallen off a cliff. It has been a shaky year but people have finally run out of money. This is bad, very bad, but it will be months before the authorities will admit that there is a major problem.

Now that official vaccine verification systems are emerging,  and now that we are heading towards negligible levels of infection in most advanced countries (apart from the EU), the second half of 2021 marks the time to end the theatre of pretending that fully-vaccinated tourists are a danger to the Thai population.

 

Edited May 25, 2021 by Poet

[morrobay]

50 minutes ago, Poet said:

 

 

, the second half of 2021 marks the time to end the theatre of pretending that fully-vaccinated tourists are a danger to the Thai population.

 

Yes all good true logic above. The ball is certainly in the Thai governments side to change narrative. So second half of year could see an end soon to all this endless speculation with some indication what way tourism is going. But not sure at all this government is capable of reversing and making major changes in entry requirements. 

 

 

 

[Jeffr2]

1 hour ago, Poet said:

With viruses, you can never be 100% sure of anything, but the probabilities are astonishingly low.

Remember, we are talking about the second half of the year, when many more advanced countries will have caught up to where Israel currently is: 60% fully-vaccinated, well below the "zero covid" active cases level of 100 per million of population, and an R0 of 0.75, meaning that their active case level will continue to drop.

The lesson seems to be that good vaccines really do start to wipe out the Coronavirus once you get to around 60%. That is lower than we expected, but is probably assisted by a certain amount of natural immunity among those who have already been infected. That will apply to even more to, say, the UK than it does to Israel.

Remember, the vast majority of those who make up the tiny 60 active cases per million in Israel are probably from the 40% who are either not vaccinated, or who have only had one shot so far. We are talking about Thailand accepting people who received their final shot at least two weeks prior to stepping onto the plane.

Peer-reviewed studies established several months ago that all the authorized Western vaccines not only make you more resistant to getting infected but, also, reduce transmission by at least two thirds. This was expected, but it was good to have it confirmed by multiple studies. Certain members here, for mystifying reasons of their own, competely ignore that key detail.

So, if a passenger was spectacularly unlucky and managed to be one of the fewer than 1 in a hundred thousand fully-vaccinated people to get infected, his ability to spread that to his fellow passengers would be extremely low and, in turn, their ability to transmit it to anyone else would be extremely low. This is why the R0 in Israel has dipped below 1.0.

Now, let's imagine that, for every million of these fully-vaccinated tourists that arrive in Thailand, 10 are infected but transmitting it about two-thirds less than an unvaccinated infected person would. That is a wildly low level of biological hazard.

Some members here are unable to think in terms of relative risk but the most relevant comparison here is between those ten low-transmitting infected tourists and the tens of thousands of infected, unvaccinated humans crossing the borders from Myanmar, Laos, and Cambodia every month.

Unskilled, poorly-educated South East Asian migrants in Thailand often live in cramped accomodation, travel on public transport, and work in poorly-ventilated factories or markets, in close proximity to hundreds of other workers and customers. For every one Thai infected by a tourist from a "zero covid" country, tens of thousands would be infected by migrants from countries with raging pandemics of their own. 
 

Much of the hysteria around the various strains is orchestrated to encourage Western citizens to become too relaxed as the summer arrives and it becomes clear that the vaccines have been wonderfully effective. If you think back on all the variant scares, including the recent Indian one, isn't it funny that they have all turned out to be nowhere near as bad as initially reported?

So far, despite loudly-amplified fears, the Western vaccines have proved to be effective against every variant. My understanding, from reading actual experts as opposed to tabloid websites, is that it was always unlikely that they would not be - viruses mutate, but they don't mutate that much.

Perhaps a future strain will be a problem but that is something you deal with if it happens. You don't destroy the world economy over some Science Fiction possibility.
 

They will be, eventually, but, in the meantime, do you understand how many Thais will die, in this country with no real social welfare system, if you completely destroy their economy?

Are you aware that, at this stage, many families have already exhausted their emergency funds?

Long before the pandemic, Thailand already had the highest levels of personal debt in the world. Families who had nothing to do with tourism relied on customers who did. Entire families were supported by Swiss men with low IQs who were "sponsoring" their daughters, but who have now stopped because they don't know when they will be able to bring their schüblig to Nakhon Ratchasima again.

My partner usually sells online to thousands of women all over Thailand every day. This month, her viewing numbers remain as high as ever but sales have fallen off a cliff. It has been a shaky year but people have finally run out of money. This is bad, very bad, but it will be months before the authorities will admit that there is a major problem.

Now that official vaccine verification systems are emerging,  and now that we are heading towards negligible levels of infection in most advanced countries (apart from the EU), the second half of 2021 marks the time to end the theatre of pretending that fully-vaccinated tourists are a danger to the Thai population.

 

Pretending fully-vaccinated tourists are a danger?  They are.  Just look at Singapore.  Fully vaccinated people there are ending up in the hospital...with covid.  And are infecting others, like the fully vaccinated worker at the airport.

 

The virus is mutating.  Some jabs that worked with the original strain don't work so well with these new variants.  Which spread easier. 

 

As for natural immunity, that's not going to happen.  Just off the phone with my cousin in Slovakia.  He got covid 2 times!  Kinda like the flu, just because you got it last year doesn't mean you won't get it this year.  Same will be true with CV19, especially as it mutates.

 

We've got a long way to go to get out of this mess.  Look at the  Seychelles. 

 

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/05/14/africa/seychelles-covid-vaccination-infection-intl-hnk-dst/index.html

[Poet]

1 minute ago, Jeffr2 said:

We've got a long way to go to get out of this mess.

Are we aiming to get to a point at which no one is dying from this thing?

My point still stands:

1. Thailand, and in particular the poorest parts of Thailand, desperately need the economic stimulas, jobs, and supply of rich idiots that mass tourism provides.

2. Millions of fully-vaccinated tourists from countries with neglible levels of active cases represent about 1/1,000th of the danger that millions of unvaccinated migrants flooding in from the uncontrolled pandemics in Myanmar, Laos, and Cambodia do.

[Jeffr2]

1 minute ago, Poet said:

Are we aiming to get to a point at which no one is dying from this thing?

My point still stands:

1. Thailand, and in particular the poorest parts of Thailand, desperately need the economic stimulas, jobs, and supply of rich idiots that mass tourism provides.

2. Millions of fully-vaccinated tourists from countries with neglible levels of active cases represent about 1/1,000th of the danger that millions of unvaccinated migrants flooding in from the uncontrolled pandemics in Myanmar, Laos, and Cambodia do.

100% agreed!  But Thailand is a long way from getting a majority of their population vaccinated.  Same with the rest of the world.  Some countries are doing good, others, not so good.

 

And with these new variants, some of the jabs don't work so well.  You can still get sick and end up in the hospital, but rarely, die.  And, vaccinated people can still pass the virus along.  These new variants are here, and spreading.

 

Thailand tied it's horse to the mass tourism wagon and is now paying the price for that.  It was easy money, until now.

[Percy P]

On 5/25/2021 at 6:40 AM, starky said:

Hard to concentrate on domestic travel in a country where the workers are held down by an elite ruling class and only earn a pittance a day. 

  Thats of course if you still have a job paying a pittance a day

https://forum.thaivisa.com/topic/1218179-thai-q1-jobless-rate-at-12-year-high-amid-virus-outbreaks/

Correct..where can one travel with minimum salary.of 350 B /day.pay rent , food school, health.m n

[Percy P]

Just now, Percy P said:

Correct..where can one travel with minimum salary.of 350 B /day.pay rent , food, school, health.

 

[Excel]

2 minutes ago, Percy P said:

Correct..where can one travel with minimum salary.of 350 B /day.pay rent , food school, health.m n

And it is simply astonishing the profits being reaped by business owners. Many locally produced  items and daily commodities are on a par with prices in UK/US yet labour costs and ancillary overheads are a fraction of the costs of the UK/US.  Even VAT is much less here than the UK

[Stargeezr]

Hey Jeffr2, look at the amount of posts with Freeduhdom at 155 posts, and

Clarkey611 , 157 posts.  Are these guys, new ids for a couple who have been banned in the

past, or just newbies, who have great claims of who they are.    Some COVID deniers

are strange people. But I have met some anti maskers and anti vaxxers who are

classic, well how can I put it, fairly mentally challenged people, who think that the

rest of the world is stupid.  Anyway just something i have observed.  For your pleasure.

Geezer

[Stargeezr]

So it is Spring Break in America, and the population is flying all over the country to spend their

money.  Good thing that America has 350 million people who can still do domestic tourism.

  I am glad that a bit less than a million of them have died, but then the pandemic is not over yet,

and Canada is still not letting many into our country.  One poster said that not many people of died of covid.

Well in the world there have been lots of deaths, but I guess the poster did not lose any of his friends or relatives

so, forgets about all the people in the world who have lost friends and relatives.  I doubt that anywhere in the

world will recover from this pandemic, for 5 to 10 years, and some places will never recover.

   I will not fly with any airline that is not government backed, as I believe that there will be a few more crashes

in the next while, when International travel resumes.  It is the domestic airlines in some countries that I am most concerned about.

   It is another reason that I am not in a hurry to take a long flight for a while yet.

   Good Luck Thailand.

Geezer

[Stargeezr]

Just watched a news story, from Memphis Tennessee that showed many people at some music

places,  like the Grand Old Opry no masks and full crowds. The comments were that in that area, the amount of vaccinated people

are not a very large percentage.  I expect to hear of some sort of spike in the next 2 weeks, and will not be surprised to

hear of some places that have full hospital ICUs again.  YUP the Great Americans, have gotten tired of this boring pandemic.

  Stayed tuned.

Geezer

[VBF]

16 hours ago, Blumpie said:

There is no disinformation.  I've found the travel advice for Thailand spot on from my country.  Entry is extremely difficult and changes on a moments notice.  It is extremely time consuming to get the proper paperwork, and even when you pay all this money and get your paperwork in order entry into Thailand is far from certain given that it all comes to a complete halt with an a-symptomatic case of COVID, or an incorrect test result.  And that's just the start of it all.  Imagine testing positive and ending up in those horrific cardboard bed warehouses for 2 weeks?  

How about health care which, if this continues, will crash?  No disinformation here.  It has to do with being responsible enough to understand the risk and what could happen to you if you decide to travel and there is no health care to speak of in 2 weeks.

Read my post again. I was responding to "...... very few locals want them as they're scared to death of catching covid....." They (the locals) are the ones being misinformed, not the potential tourists. The travel advice you quoted is spot on - basically don't!

Edited May 26, 2021 by VBF

[starky]

23 hours ago, steevjee said:

Yep!! You're wrong on all points

Bwahaha well illustrated and poignant rebuttal peanut.  Let me guess...? West Australian? Goatee and or mullet and or crappy tattoos with a thirst for swanny D

Edited May 26, 2021 by starky

[chalawaan]

They finally graduated from the sandbox to the big boys play-space I see.

[Blumpie]

2 hours ago, chalawaan said:

They finally graduated from the sandbox to the big boys play-space I see.

Your hopes of what could and what should happen will not negate what will happen.  That being, tourism will not return to normal until Thailand has this virus under control.  

I understand people are besides themselves and have no money coming in, but it's irrelevant to the truth.  That is - there will be no normal tourism until Thailand gets this under control.  Tourism, and let's remember, it's not your beer drinking buddies going to Thailand for a holiday, will never return to pre pandemic levels under this climate.  

What we know about transmissibility of this virus we will have to leave to the experts, and the experiments are happening right now in real time.  In six months, a year, we will know so much more about what we could our shouldn't have done.  It doesn't matter what Thailand does right now - it's getting out of control and they need to ensure that hospitals do not get over run.  

So the borders remain as they are now, and for those foreigners who decide to run this horrific gauntlet to get into a country under lockdown, then that's great and I hope they have a great time.

For the usual families who want a simple 2 week holiday, they are not going to Thailand and I give you a 100 percent guarantee on that.  

[Lingba]

well the way they are handling the rollout of vaccines..this is the first truthful thing they have ever said

 

[cheapcanuck]

This is a realistic report.

Travel industry, in general, will also be slow to recover as peoples confidence returns.

[drenddy]

18 hours ago, Poet said:

So, if a passenger was spectacularly unlucky and managed to be one of the fewer than 1 in a hundred thousand fully-vaccinated people to get infected, his ability to spread that to his fellow passengers would be extremely low and, in turn, their ability to transmit it to anyone else would be extremely low. 

 

My wife returned few weeks ago from Thailand to Denmark, via Doha. 

 

About 12 days after arrival, we get call from Corona Hotline.There was or were passengers positive with a concerning mutation, most likely indian(my wife told me many pax with indian origins were onboard, but this does not necessarily meant they were infected, it could be anyone) 

 

Took PCR test, despite having 3 antigen tests in the following weeks, it came negative. 

My point is there is alot of fear mongering, scared people are easier/easiest to control. 

Of course, we don't know, how close she was to the involved passengers, but nevertheless... 

[rabang]

Be proactive for once and fully open to vaccinated people Thailand. It has more advantages than risks. If you don't trust the vaccines you might as well stay closed forever.

[drenddy]

50 minutes ago, rabang said:

Be proactive for once and fully open to vaccinated people Thailand. It has more advantages than risks. If you don't trust the vaccines you might as well stay closed forever.

 

It's difficult a change now, after months of fear inseminated into thai people. 

Furthermore, I am pretty sure they are incompetent as well. 

While politically motivated as well, the decision to quarantine fully vaccinated travellers is not a sign of thai excellence in virologi, they have no clue at all. 

[kynikoi]

First, this isn't a Thai awakening but rather foreign press analysis.

 

It's so plain to see and dozens perhaps hundreds of us had said the same over the past year if not longer.

Thailand was already becoming expensive and unattractive to many westerners. Visas problematic leaving just the 50+ sex tourists. The economies in the west have struggled for years. Since covid many suffering job loss and systematic job loss.

East Europe not really much better but it's warm, exotic and cheaper than W Europe. Also easier for visas.

Chinese economy is very shaky as well. This is obviously the target market but structurally the economy isn't sound. Property markets which fueled spending having problems. As for Thai developers dreaming of fobbing condos off on Chinese I think there's been a rethink by Chinese purchasing condos to realize hard returns on black money and their ability to manage letting condos as absentee landlord.

With 1B people, bad climate and horrible pollution this lot is not done with Thailand.

India and Pakistan. When covid has run its course in a few years and middle class has their vaccines they will be back. The middle class that can afford it and the sex tourists.

Transnational criminals from China will continue to put down roots.

I've nothing to base this on but I'd say Thailand might get half it's numbers back by 2026.

Of course, nothing will be done to educate and retrain. No new technology efforts.  So, expect 5-10% of GDP to never return. The jobs, growth. Trouble is there are no jobs and will be no jobs. If I recall correctly huge numbers of uni grads graduate finding it impossible to find work. This is not just the upcountry rajabahts but top universities.

Thailand is unattractive as investment. Unskilled, uneducated workers, robots coming online. It's just good for Chinese factories looking to game country quotas.

The thing is western countries going through all sorts of changes. Why would Thailand be immune?

Finally, Thailand is run like a private, family corporation or military enterprise than a functioning democratic nation state. The people that are in government are not educated or even smart. Further, the power structure forces all the wrong things on the nation and people. No good can come from that. It's a natural law of economics and sociology.

 

Place will devolve into the Philippines in less than a generation. Mark these words. You see it in the youth. FB group of 1M we want to leave! They know the future of this nation better than we ever will.

Edited May 26, 2021 by kynikoi

[kynikoi]

The fix as best it can help is so simple.

 

Vaccinate and let all the tourists return. If you're vaccinated why would you care?

 

Have everyone purchase covid insurance in travel policy.

 

US vaccinated 70m in no time.

 

Problem solved as much as it can be.

Edited May 26, 2021 by kynikoi

[Jeffr2]

https://thepattayanews.com/2021/05/26/krungsri-research-lowers-forecast-of-number-of-foreign-tourists-expected-to-thailand-this-year-to-around-300000/

 

Krungsri Research lowers forecast of number of foreign tourists expected to Thailand this year to around 300,000

[Scott]

A post with misleading information and no citation has been reported and removed.  

 

[Excel]

5 minutes ago, Jeffr2 said:

https://thepattayanews.com/2021/05/26/krungsri-research-lowers-forecast-of-number-of-foreign-tourists-expected-to-thailand-this-year-to-around-300000/

 

Krungsri Research lowers forecast of number of foreign tourists expected to Thailand this year to around 300,000

No doubt TAT will counter that soon with a statement that their (Krungsri)assumptions are wrong and that predicted foreign tourists for the remaining part of this year will be within the range  of 0 to 30 million, just to cover themselves ????

[A Los for words]

On 5/25/2021 at 7:48 AM, riverhigh said:

I think once the population has been vaccinted and reached herd immunity, there will be a "V" shape recovery in the economy. The pent up demand for travel will be phenomenal. My prediction is 18 months tops, not 5 years, before a full recovery and then some. I think the article is overly pessimistic and not forward looking. Open the gates (international borders) and there will be stampede. I can see hotels being overwhelmed with tourists. In 18 moths time we will be seeing the sign "no rooms availalble" causing panic in the hesitant traveller. Call it wishful thinking (smile) but those are my thoughts.

I predict an 'M' shape in the strategy to open Phuket on July 1st 2021