How has the high season been for your business so far?

Would you say it's down on last year, and if so, by how much?

Only tourism businesses please, if you have a biz directed at expats it's not relevant.

I would guess that we are down by 25%, other than the time the airport was closed and about two weeks after when we were probably down by 50% from other years. We have both tourist and expat customers, but some expats have returned home permanantly and many others have gone back to work overseas because their incomes have gone down so far.

Edited January 19, 200917 yr by Ulysses G.

Bad, basically this high season is a washout.

Yes the numbers are recovering from November, but we are looking at 60-70% of where we were last year. Alot of sitting around and doing nothing.

The worse part is everyone has heard of TAT saying "reduce prices to attract tourist", so everyone is making discount demands on everything.

If this keeps up, I'll be out of a job soon.

My (ex's) airport hotel at Phuket? Fully booked tonight, fully booked last night (and the night before and the night before and blah blah blah blah blah).

But we had to reduce the room-rate a little because other 'holiday' hotels in Phuket had cut their room-rates by a good amount. This made our normal rate look rather high ...

Certainly there seem to be less tourists about. But our business is not really affected because we are a small hotel anyway, not a 500-room business!

Simon

I rent holiday houses in Bangkok and there were not any cancellation over the high season (just a few date changes) and the deposits were payed well in advance. I did this season better than the last years.

however, a few previous guests who were interested in coming back over winter/spring decided to go some other countries because of the thai problems.

a very little new enquiries - so bleak future

My business, which depends almost exclusively on tourists, had a big dip from December 8 till December 20. The airport situation might have contributed to this, but usually the number of tourists is going down temporarily anyway halfway December: those who want to celebrate Christmas&New Year at home have left, and those who wish to celebrate it here haven't arrived yet.

But overall I still have 50% more than last year, although my business exists since 2001.(One would rather expect to make a business a big leap in the second year or so). But this might deviate strongly from the general trend, since the beach resort town Khao Lak is rapidly up and coming. My place is a low budget bungalow resort, but I know the more upmarket places, especially those depending on package tourists, have been far more heavily affected by political turmoil in Thailand and by the global financial meltdown.