Is It High Season Or...

[anneclayton]

MONDAY:

What happened to Pattaya streets? Where are the tourists?! Please correct me if I am wrong - it's December 8th NOT September 8th? I dropped in my favorite pub at 20:30 - the busiest time and the worst for finding a table. Wow. There were only 6 tables occupied. Gradually and slowly by 21:30 people started to catch up... What happened? Do people eat late now because of the crisis?? It was still less than 50% occiped when I left. Hey, wait a second. This pub was not famous for attracting too many tourists. It was frequented by farangs who live here.

Mike Shopping Mall was so empty - it felt SCARY. I took a ride up to the dolphin statue and back on the Beach road. The numerous beer gardens look weird - thai band is playing in front of 5 customers watching... Especially when these 5 people sit among 30 tables. They should do something about it. Maybe remove all the extra tables... All the freelancers at the Beach road are sitting quietly - feels almost like mourning.

WEDNESDAY update:

Slightly better today. Same routine but taken 1.5 hours earlier. About 15-25% percent better. Right. A year ago the place was crawling up until 1 am. Right, the traffic on the street is heavy but parking is not. Where did all the buyers go?

Most contacts in the tourism industry report business as "SLOW". In other sectors also say it's way too quiet. So it looks like all the cheerleadering didn't help in the end. Suvarnabhumi disaster has taken its toll. Right, right, we gonna get the X-MAS/New Year spike soon. Remember those lines just to get into Sizzler a year ago, eh? I guess, they are gone. How big is that spike gonna be? What comes after it?

[Scabo]

Yes I agree Anne. There is almost a lonely feeling walking

around town seeing so many places empty.

Sad to see,when you think that these business are peoples

livelyhood.

[philliphn]

What would help would be classes in customer service and courtesy.

[Humphrey Bear]

What would help would be classes in customer service and courtesy.

Probably too late for that - the service / courtesy bit means that existing customers return or stay away. The Thai attitude in many tourist-related businesses has already ensured that most will not return.

The airports fiasco has killed off many newcomers desire to see Thailand.

Things move on - Thailand has had it's day as a tourist centre and must seek new ways to improve it's international earning power. Only the mongers will continue to arrive in fairly constant numbers, whilst the supply of young bodies is renewed every year.

Not allowed to purchase land - not allowed more than 49% of a company - who wants to do nusiness in a major way here?

Ask Carlsberg - ask Bilfinger - ask all who were involved in building Su'boom.

[NanLaew]

Are you on the piss again HB? So many typos and negativity... must be the red wine again.

Historically, high season is noticeable in Pattaya from the FIRST WEEKEND BEFORE CHRISTMAS. This is when the usual Christmas holiday punter gets on a plane and heads for sunny climes.

Trying to gauge if the high-season is a blow-out or otherwise after the first couple of weeks of December isn't a precise indicator.

BTW, I like the current situation, I managed to find places to park as well as being able to cross Beach and 2nd Road without running the gauntlet of bikes and songtaews.

Oh yes, the prices of building materials has dropped considerably these past couple of months. Time to build that extension or that new place further out in the boonies.

Edited December 11, 2008 by NanLaew

[cali4995]

Agree with philliphn, when you're discouraged new arrivals with political instability, terrorism problems

in the South, and airport closures, all you have left is the existing customer base, and very few

businesses seem to cater to "repeat customers." They want one-shot-only surly gouging. Hard to feel

sorry for some of them but I fear there will be massive lay-offs going through the "high-season".

[0Mix1up]

no deals on air fares from oz

in fact very high

[Ulysses G.]

Are you on the piss again HB? So many typos and negativity... must be the red wine again.

Historically, high season is noticeable in Pattaya from the FIRST WEEKEND BEFORE CHRISTMAS. This is when the usual Christmas holiday punter gets on a plane and heads for sunny climes.

That certainly isn't true in Chiang Mai. Super-high-season usually hits about the middle of November and I would guess that Pattaya would be similar. We were actually doing quite well until the A-holes in Bangkok blew high season for everyone.

[ronz28]

World wide recession is here so who wants to risk a costly Thailand travel nightmare when money is tight? When might the trouble start up again? Would it delay one from returning to work and get one fired? There are too many other places to visit and relax that are less risky now. Cross Greece off the list too. Maybe after a couple of years of no more abusing innocent tourists by preventing them from traveling home, etc.... people might forgive and forget but it is a lot to overcome.... Maybe Thailand can turn it all around but I don't see any evidence of that yet.

[britmaveric]

Dead - worse than Summer time which speaks volumes.

[Phil Conners]

Things move on - Thailand has had it's day as a tourist centre and must seek new ways to improve it's international earning power. Only the mongers will continue to arrive in fairly constant numbers, whilst the supply of young bodies is renewed every year.

Also that seems to be coming to an end. Several bar owners I know complain they can't get enough girls. Seems education etc is improving to the point that the steady "supply of young bodies" is drying up.

[britmaveric]

Depends on the bar/gogo - TQ2 had about 50 new dancers - thought for one minute more of them than actual customers. I don't think supply is the issue per say, prob too many bars.

[MeetJohnDoe]

Also that seems to be coming to an end. Several bar owners I know complain they can't get enough girls. Seems education etc is improving to the point that the steady "supply of young bodies" is drying up.

The crash in farm commodity prices (rice, rubber, tapioca) will produce a bumper crop of Issan girls hitting town in the next few months and beyond

[MeetJohnDoe]

I have been out and about this week and didn't find it as dead as one would have expected considering the WW recession, devalued currencies, and airport fiasco. One can't turn around without bumbing into a group of Ruskies Maybe all these people booked packages before all the troubles and couldn't cancel. Maybe the really bad season will be next summer and fall for the trips people would be booking now for then that will not be made.

The places I visited were doing good business. Pete's Pattaya Beer Garden was packed at 9 pm...just about every table was taken (and that's a huge place) and the waitress told me it would be a 30 minute wait (turned out to be 40) for my food order (and she said they had 3 cooks working). [Heads up Pete for training your staff to inform customers when there will be a long wait for food.]

Next went to What's Up go-go for drinks and again, completely full. So some places are still doing well.

[Pattaya46]

Depends on the bar/gogo - TQ2 had about 50 new dancers - ...

Please be serious.

TQ2 use to have 25-30 girls working in.

There is no way you can add 50 more ladies inside

There is not even the possibility to have 50 ladies in such a small gogo...

And today problem is not the number of ladies in Pattaya

but the "quality" of these ladies.

Many ladies that you find today in aGoGos

could only have work in bars 1 or 2 years before, not in aGoGo.

[britmaveric]

Didnt believe until they all came out - asked one of the ladies I know there - she said they hire new ladies mak mak mak.

[tropo]

Historically, high season is noticeable in Pattaya from the FIRST WEEKEND BEFORE CHRISTMAS. This is when the usual Christmas holiday punter gets on a plane and heads for sunny climes.

Trying to gauge if the high-season is a blow-out or otherwise after the first couple of weeks of December isn't a precise indicator.

From what I've noticed over the last 3 years, it usually gets busy the weeks after Christmas, not before. January always seems a lot busier than December.

It was starting to get busy the week before they closed down Swampy.

The kebab guy on the Pattaya Tai/2nd Road intersection is a good yardstick. In the weeks leading up to the airport closure he was almost through his meat by 12 midnight on most nights. Last night at 4am he had plenty left and would probably have had to close up with meat to spare.

[Lancelot]

This morning I ate breakfast at the Apex buffet. About half the tables were occupied, not bad actually considering the world wide economic recession.

I think its just a time delay factor-the stock market tanked in October, now the (world wide) employment layoffs are begining and slowly, inevitably consumers will close their wallets. I think the real Pattaya slow down will occur in the second quarter of 2009

Edited December 11, 2008 by Lancelot

[Tolley]

I am coming back to thailand on the 19th and my flight from Sydney was 2150 AUD which is very expensive.

In fact the most i ever paid was 1700AUD in high season from Sydney.

Add to this the cost of sanuk with the Aussie dollar down to 23 baht from a high of 32 and you are looking at a much more expensive trip.

Internal political problems in Thailand and the global economic downturn are bound to have some negative effect on tourism in Thailand.

It will be interesting to see how busy Pattaya is over Xmas and New Year.

[LennyW]

Was at immigration today and that place was VERY busy, seemed to be quite a few more foreigners around Jomtien beach and the connecting soi's, more than the last few weeks anyway?

[BeauKarl]

I think Pattaya has spread loads in the past few years, so the guys are more spread out aswell, looking like it's less packed.

What I don't see at the moment is many tourbusses (not that I miss them) and that will hit loads of Thai people, living of them.

Behind our house there's a few elifant villages and even they are strolling around on the streets looking for food and money to feed them. Something I've not seen in the past 2 year.

[sharecropper]

Was at immigration today and that place was VERY busy, seemed to be quite a few more foreigners around Jomtien beach and the connecting soi's, more than the last few weeks anyway?

I also went past there today and it was packed. I couldn't park in the soi. I couldn't believe the number of people at the immigration office, but I suspect that is because of the impending holiday and most are not tourists.

Later I took a baht bus into Pattaya and again was surprised at the quiet streets, malls and shops. This is the lowest LOW season, let alone high season, I have seen in 6 years. I think there are a few more tourists around, but not the Russians, who were keeping the malls in business, and maybe it will get busier towards the holidays, but that will be the P2P market mostly, and not the wider (Russian and Asian) tourist market the city has grown used to and grown fat on.

[ronz28]

Russians are looking for something to buy with their Rubles that may soon be or is being devalued....

Russians Buy Jewelry, Hoard Dollars as Ruble Plunges (Update1)

By Emma O’Brien and William Mauldin

Dec. 11 (Bloomberg) -- Moscow resident Tima Kulikov banked on the full faith and credit of the U.S. government, not the Kremlin, when he sold his biggest asset for cash.

The 31-year-old director of a social networking Web site initially agreed to sell his apartment for rubles, then cringed at the thought of the currency weakening as it sat in a lockbox pending settlement of the contract. It wasn’t until the buyer showed up with $250,000 stacked in old mobile-phone boxes and stuffed in his pockets that Kulikov closed the deal.

“The exchange rate we agreed on wasn’t great, but I did it because the money’s going to lie there for a month,” Kulikov said. “Put it this way, the ruble’s more likely to have problems than the dollar.”

Russians are shifting their cash into foreign currencies and buying things they don’t need as the economy stalls and the central bank weakens its defense of the ruble, signaling a larger devaluation may be on the way. The currency has fallen 16 percent against the dollar since August, when Russia’s invasion of neighboring Georgia helped spur investors to pull almost $200 billion out of the country, according to BNP Paribas SA.

The central bank today expanded the ruble’s trading band against a basket of dollars and euros, allowing it to drop 0.8 percent, said a spokesman who declined to be identified on bank policy.

With the specter of the 1998 debt default and devaluation in mind, Russians withdrew 355 billion rubles ($13 billion), or 6 percent of all savings, from their accounts in October, the most since the central bank started posting the data two years ago. Foreign-currency deposits rose 11 percent.

Oligarchs Pinched

Russians’ fears are fueling the case for devaluation, with most pressure on the currency coming from locals converting their cash, according to Basil Issa, an emerging-markets analyst at BNP Paribas in London.

Property is now a protective investment, not just a status symbol, said Sergei Polonsky, founder of real estate developer Mirax Group, which is building Moscow’s tallest skyscraper.

“Lately our clients are mostly those who buy real estate not to live in but to secure their investments,” Polonsky said. “No one wants to be left with pieces of paper.”

The 25 wealthiest Russians on Forbes magazine’s list of billionaires, including Oleg Deripaska and Roman Abramovich, lost a combined $230 billion from May to October as asset values plummeted, according to Bloomberg calculations.

‘Feel Happy’

For the burgeoning middle class, investments of choice range from electronics to gold jewelry. Evroset, Russia’s largest mobile-phone chain, is telling people to buy anything they can.

“It’s better to feel happy that you own something than to fear losing the money you have earned,” Chairman Yevgeny Chichvarkin says in a letter posted at 5,200 Evroset stores. “If you need a car, buy a car! If you need an apartment, buy an apartment! If you need a fur coat, buy a fur coat!”

Sales at Technosila, the third-biggest consumer electronics chain, have doubled since September as customers rush to swap rubles for flat-screen TVs and laptops, spokeswoman Nadezhda Senyuk said by phone from Moscow, where the company is based.

Jewelry sales are also accelerating, particularly items made of gold and diamonds, said Vladimir Stankevich, advertising director at Adamas, Russia’s third-largest jewelry retailer.

“More cash appeared on the market and there’s an opinion among shoppers that gold is a good investment in times of crisis,” Stankevich said.

Natalya Kulikova has a different approach. The 31-year-old sales manager said she’s opened accounts in rubles, euros and dollars at three different banks -- one foreign and two domestic -- to guard her savings.

“My main goal is to save money,” she said.

Putin Pledge

Those who don’t want to spend are keeping more money at home or in safe-deposit boxes because the government guarantee on bank accounts is limited to 700,000 rubles, said Yulia Tsepliaeva, chief economist in Moscow at Merrill Lynch & Co.

Alfa Bank, Russia’s biggest non-state lender, said demand for boxes has increased about 40 percent since October, and there are few available.

“The Russian experience with saving is not that good and people prefer to consume and enjoy rather than save in pre-crisis situations,” Tsepliaeva said. “Buy cash dollars and put them in mattresses or safe deposit boxes but not in accounts because most crises are accompanied by banking crises.”

A decade ago, many lost their life savings after the ruble plunged 71 percent against the dollar. Those fears prompted Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to pledge not to allow “sharp jumps” in the exchange rate, during a call-in television show Dec. 4.

‘Ideal Time’

Troika Dialog, Russia’s oldest investment bank, is betting the central bank will allow a one-time devaluation of the ruble of about 20 percent in January, following New Year’s and Orthodox Christmas celebrations.

“With the holidays at the beginning of January, companies won’t be fully working and people will be spending more money,” said Evgeny Gavrilenkov, Troika’s chief economist and a former acting head of the government’s Bureau of Economic Analysis. “That means demand for rubles will increase and that means it’s an ideal time to allow a devaluation.”

Russia has drained almost a quarter of its foreign-currency reserves, the world’s third-largest, since August as it tries to slow the ruble’s decline. The central bank has widened the trading band five times in the past month, effectively reducing its defense of the currency amid plunging oil prices.

Devaluation Skeptic

Urals crude, Russia’s main export earner, has slumped 72 percent since reaching a record $142.94 a barrel July 4. It fell below $40 for the first time in three years last week, compared with the $70 needed to balance the country’s budget.

The government will avoid a large, one-step devaluation because it wants to prevent a run on the banks and lure back foreign investors, said Chris Weafer, chief strategist in Moscow at UralSib Financial Corp.

“I’m skeptical a 10 to 15 percent devaluation will provide a significant boost for the economy because the sector that it will most benefit, manufacturing, is just too small,” he said.

The ruble will probably be allowed to drop in small steps to as low as 33 per dollar by the middle of 2009, from about 28 now, Weafer estimates. It will end next year at 26.8 because of a recovery in oil prices and a weaker U.S. currency, he said.

Svetlana Guseva isn’t taking any chances.

The 32-year-old mother of two from the southern city of Sochi plans to take her 8-year-old daughter, Dasha, to Moscow for the New Year’s holiday, a trip that will cost twice her family’s monthly income of about 30,000 rubles.

“This way at least we’ll have some memories,” she said.

To contact the reporters on this story: Emma O’Brien in Moscow at [email protected]; William Mauldin in Moscow at [email protected].

[MeetJohnDoe]

No need to post an entire Bloomberg article about the crashing rubble...just mention it in your post and maybe put a link if you must...sheeze.

[CGW]

^ Best article I have read all day

Took me most of the day to wade through it though!

[NanLaew]

TQ2 had about 50 new dancers -

And about time too! That averages out at around 5/year since they opened.

[monty]

Been to Koh Lahn a few days ago, and it was packed. But ONLY Russians.

Heck, even quite a few of the beach chair operator's staff spoke a fair bit of Russian!

The odd English and German bloke around, a few Thai people, but at least 85% were Russians. Most of the younger females were quite easy on the eyes I must admit, my (Thai) wife mentioned to me that they seemed to be taking better care of themselves them most average Western women!

For me the biggest give away on how quit it is, is the ease of finding parking space. I know very little of the tourists drive cars, yet previous years finding parking always was a nightmare, and no you can park pretty mucg right where you have to be...

[spuey]

Was out last night soi 7 soi8 thought is was alot more busy than it was when i was there last time, 3 days ago...no doubt about it its gonna be real busy here over xmas and new year, but maybe not as busy as previous years. Personally i like it as it is, but if i owned a buisness here i depend on i would be a little worried rifht now i think.

[anneclayton]

Nice try, ronz28, but you know what? Next time, when you want to kill some else's thread, why don't you steal an article about Argentinians and their tango... It might as well have more relevance.

[anneclayton]

SATURDAY DEC. 14

It's 21:00 in the evening and Sizzler is only 25-30% busy. Pick up any table you like!

I agree with other posters that lack of tourists is actually an advantage for expats living here. Only if your income does not depend on tourism.