Focus On Quality Tourists, Not Quantity, Urges PM Abhisit

[thaibeachlovers]

"A smattering of Russians and no one else" was how the tourist numbers on Koh Samet were described to me yesterday. "Even the staff are getting worried", said the restaurateur of eleven years in a prime location on the island.

"Low season hasn't even begun and I've never seen it this bad, even the Scandinavians have vanished."

This is the reality and these business owners are not expecting any growth in trade for the foreseeable future, particularly now with very high oil prices on the horizon with the revolutions across the Middle East, continuing global economic turmoil and the resilient strength of the Thai Baht.

So I think they need to be concentrating on quantity. Not quite sure how you control quality unless consulate interviews are conducted to get a 30 day holiday visa.

Poor tourist numbers in Samet- sounds like chickens coming home to roost!

Perhaps the word has finally got around about what a disgusting rubbish tip Samet is. Add to that an unsafe pier, taxi mafia, overpriced accomodation, National Park rip off fees, disgusting village and it's no wonder no one wants to go.

I swore I'd never go back, and I haven't.

[thaibeachlovers]

Snap. I find the Thai folk around me more amenable and friendly than those in the country that I once called home.

BTW Many of the old guys that you see in Pattaya are no longer in the sex scene. Most can't even remember any more how to do it and climbing the stairs of a bag shanty for a bit of naughty would prove to be a major operation. Having a lady to take care of you is not prostitution else most of the nursing homes in the UK would be closed down. It is not uncommon to see senior citizens bereft of a limb lost in the service of their country and their ungrateful Governments don't give a toss about them; others are merely losing their physical powers. Unable to afford much needed help, and with the breakup of the traditional family, Thailand is a very viable option for them. Most have the nous to known that keeping a little darling in the style to which she is not accustomed is fraught with danger, neither would they have much in the way of a common interest. Most ladies know that in caring for a senior they have found a safe harbour from life's storms. To call them prostitutes would be a grave misunderstanding of the ladies roles and of the relationship both enjoy. Does anybody think that the golf caddies are prostitutes?

It's obvious from their comments that some posters on this thread have no idea about Pattaya other than what some "friend" told them about Walking Street and Soi 6.

Bit sad really.

[thaibeachlovers]

If Abhisit wants "quality tourists", perhaps he could provide a quality destination.

Sadly, Thailand hardly qualifies at present, unless one considers a few 5 star hotels amongst congested roads ( minus negotiable pavements ) and crumbling infrastructure "quality".

Perhaps really getting rid of corruption would help for starters.

Last time I went, Singapore would qualify as a "quality" destination, but I doubt that at Singapore prices many of Thailand 's tourists would be visiting LOS.

Thailand is fine as it is, for those of us that want to visit, so don't try to "fix" it, please!

[MJP]

"A smattering of Russians and no one else" was how the tourist numbers on Koh Samet were described to me yesterday. "Even the staff are getting worried", said the restaurateur of eleven years in a prime location on the island.

"Low season hasn't even begun and I've never seen it this bad, even the Scandinavians have vanished."

This is the reality and these business owners are not expecting any growth in trade for the foreseeable future, particularly now with very high oil prices on the horizon with the revolutions across the Middle East, continuing global economic turmoil and the resilient strength of the Thai Baht.

So I think they need to be concentrating on quantity. Not quite sure how you control quality unless consulate interviews are conducted to get a 30 day holiday visa.

Poor tourist numbers in Samet- sounds like chickens coming home to roost!

Perhaps the word has finally got around about what a disgusting rubbish tip Samet is. Add to that an unsafe pier, taxi mafia, overpriced accomodation, National Park rip off fees, disgusting village and it's no wonder no one wants to go.

I swore I'd never go back, and I haven't.

I did mention to him that Samet had got a bad press recently and not without good reason. Yes, I know monied families up here in Issan that won't go near the place.

[Ricardo]

Wasn't it Thaksin's master plan to convince investors to build 5 star hotels in ChiangMai, plus promising to expand the airport into an international "hub", plus all the high end attractions like safari park etc??? How is the plan coming along??? All working perfectly?

The luxury-hotels were built, the slightly-sad Night Safari and the major-expansion of our local airport were built, but the lucrative casino-licenses failed-to-arrive (a good thing too IMO !) and so the tidal-wave of gamblers/tourists never came !

Chiang Mai continues to be a nice place to live or visit, the domestic-tourists arrive on their tour-buses in droves every December/January, but the major growth of high-end Elite tourists has yet to be seen here.

Perhaps they should have stuck to backpackers & short-visit package-tourists after-all ?

erm ... edit to add, this may be a bit of a metaphor (or something like that), for the country as-a-whole ?

Edited March 5, 2011 by Ricardo

[mesohappy]

How stupid can you get!

Young "low quality" backpack tourists who have had a wonderful experience in Thailand talk about it to parents and friends, and debunk the myths of Thailand being a dangerous third world country. Who do you think "discovered" what are now high-end island resorts, etc! In addition, many of these come back again in a few years with a lot more cash. Talk about penny-wise and pound-foolish. Thailand should be encouraging these visitors.

As a former backpacker turned wealthy tourist who returns often, I agree completely.

[Sydebolle]

Forget Thailand; operations in Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia and even Laos and the Philippines work MUCH better. Educated staff, no staff shortage, not only old hookers and katoeys, plying bath busses in Pattaya and touts and ghost cabbies all over the country. Clean up the godforsaken mess first and then talk.

I - for one - could witness the downfall of Thailand over the last 25 years. Truly AMAZING indeed!

[ginjag]

Forget Thailand; operations in Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia and even Laos and the Philippines work MUCH better. Educated staff, no staff shortage, not only old hookers and katoeys, plying bath busses in Pattaya and touts and ghost cabbies all over the country. Clean up the godforsaken mess first and then talk.

I - for one - could witness the downfall of Thailand over the last 25 years. Truly AMAZING indeed!

Since this shizen has been going on since I came here over 30 years ago, you name it it's rotten to the core with corruption, it affects first THAI people,, we know other countries have corruption-but we are talking about it HERE. If the westerners say if you dont like it GO HOME... they have to think if it keeps getting more bad--THEY will also be on their way. The biggest problem is the top people who are involved in it all....they will NOT clean it up as their rip off bank balances will suffer.... dont you see the little splashes now and again about a clean up is a cover for them BY THEM to be seen as things are going to improve.

Its the same as the airport probs initial corruption-and ongoing-the bib-ongoing-palm oil-HaHA. Big wig red shirts stirring up farm workers to cause unrest and paying their expences to disrupt, I hope I will be one of the last to leave here--as I was one of the first to arrive, cause I like it here YES YES......it is that bad getting that I want to see it go downhill before I go MAD MAD MAD--55555555 seriously though no one in their right mind can change Pattaya. They can make footpaths to walk on--the whole of the beach road--Mike shopping side. it's NOT a Hi So's place in general, it is a big brothel, with some nice PENG hotels littered here and there.

[pooket]

'Siam Simon' timestamp='1299108773' post='4254705']

Why would anyone be concerned about tourism anyway , they are often touted as such a minimal monetary input into Thailand , even expats who contribute millions into the local economies are treated as mere second class citizens , made to jump through hoops to stay , then treated as ' Ignorami ' who are not listened to for a wealth of suggestions to improve life for all .

When Thai improve the size of the welcome mat and hone up on how to treat visitors to their country , maybe , just maybe , tourism may improve to a scale where TAT can provide honest numbers , sorry , did I mention a word not contained in the Thai dictionary ?

How did you get to be a 2nd class citizen? What's your secret? I've been here 6 years and I'm only a 4th class citizen.

1st class: white skin Thai people

2nd class: dark skin Thai people

3rd class: dogs

4th class: me

[rheinwiese]

I might be missing something here, but surely Thailand needs 'quantity' to fill up all those empty hotel rooms? Quality is just going to direct high profit business to a few hotels? Thus not much of a benefit to the whole tourism business in Thailand?

Yes, exactly. It is not only 5 Star hotels needing business here,

but the full range of business from hostels to staffed villa rentals, food stalls to Michelin star chefs, ALL needing business.

But the ones with the access to TOT's ears are the upper range guys

so of course they whine for their own market segment being under filled.

What concerns me the most is the apparent uncontrolled expansion in construction of new hotels which you mentioned in a previous message. I would dearly love to know which figures the hotel owners/investors use when calculating the viability of the project. I am well acquainted with a 5 star hotel up country that has been in business over 10 years. When it was built everyone believed it would be a white elephant, and I think the rack rates when it opened were close to 10k per night at 25 to the USD. Today, you can get a room for about 2k baht.

It seems that the uncontrolled, unplanned construction of these hotels of all star ratings has been continuing apace for the last 5 years at least in many of the tourist areas, although I can't say I know all of the tourist numbers. What figures were they predicting for actual tourism growth 5 years ago to encourage this continued expansion. It seems to me, all it has done is allow tour operators to bargain down the prices and allow service to drop as targetted revenues in the hotels don't even get close. Would the country magically come to a standstill if there was a stop on new hotel licenses once the current crop of hotels under construction are finished.

At least this would give a chance for everyone to step back and take a breath and make a proper plan. Would it be a tragedy if there was a small shortage of rooms in the resorts, but it at least allowed the prices for accommodation to firm up a little bit instead of being discounted to the ground.

Of course the global recession is hurting tourism, of course the yellow/red mess has dissuaded a certain percentage of people from coming. But what is wrong with taking a given resort as it stands today and not expanding it any more for the next 5 years, give the authorities some time to really focus on improving the environment in those resorts, and stop cheapening the investments that have already been made and trying to spread thinner revenues around and ever increasing amount of establishments.

Wasn't it Thaksin's master plan to convince investors to build 5 star hotels in ChiangMai, plus promising to expand the airport into an international "hub", plus all the high end attractions like safari park etc??? How is the plan coming along??? All working perfectly?

Very Interesting read.

Article from 2001

The Nation

Date 30.02.2001

Opinion

WELCOME TO THIGHLANDIA

The prime minister (Thaksin S.) is touting tourism as a quick fix for the country’s staggering economy. The consequences are not a matter of prediction; the evidence is there for anyone who wants to look, writes Chang Noi (a pseudonym) in The Nation (30.4.01).

When the Thai economy hits trouble, the government turns to tourism. It happened in the last crisis in the early 1980s. With agriculture slumping and industry moribund, the economic planners seized on services. They sent on 200,000 Thai workers off to the Middle East and doubled tourist arrivals in five years.

As the prime minister [Thaksin Shinawatra] recently said, tourism is quick, cheap, and easy. The ingredients are already there. Sun, sea, smiles, culture. Some of these spare resources haven’t even been sold yet. With better marketing, the returns will jump. Twenty billion baht more from Chiang Mai. Ten more from Phuket. Another twenty from everywhere else. All by this time next year.

Amid this enthusiasm, it’s difficult to detect words like “control” or “consequences”. The consequences are not a matter of theory or prediction. The evidence is there for anyone who wants to look. Thailand’s main tourist product is the beach resort, with sun, sea, sand and the S-word, which the tourist planners seem so reluctant to talk about.

The development cycle is clear from the experience of 40 years.

Stage 1: Start with a place of outstanding beauty, which attracts people because it is drop-dead gorgeous. Impose absolutely no controls. Allow get-rich-quick entrepreneurs to encroach on the beach, blow up the rocks, scatter garbage and pour concrete everywhere.

Stage 2: The resort is now popular but rapidly losing its natural charm. Add large quantities of sex and comfort. Build large, luxurious hotels. Import lots of girls.

Stage 3: By now the natural beauty is totally obliterated. The seafront is an essay in bad architecture. The hinterland is a shantytown of beer bars. Develop the remains as a male fantasy theme park. Add anything with testosterone appeal – big motorbikes, shooting ranges, go-kart tracks, boxing rings, archery. Bring in more and more girls (and boys). There you have it: Thighlandia. Then stack it high and sell it cheap. You can travel round Thailand and see this development cycle in action.

Pattaya is long in stage 3. Phuket is hovering on the borderline between stage 2 and stage 3. The island has become a building site. Patong is spreading like a stain. Hua Hin is on the edge between stage 1 and stage 2. The architectural assault on the beauty of the beach-front is complete. Over the last year, Patong-ization has started, and the old fishing village is filling up with girls, bars and the trappings of Thighlandia.

Thailand’s second tourist product is the hill town offering a mixture of mountain scenery, old culture, and exotic people. This has also its development cycle.

The first visitors are attracted by nature and adventure. They climb the hills, paddle the rivers, visit the hill people and experience the temples. They generate little revenue, but they create a reputation.

At stage 2, as the numbers of visitors increase, the original appeal of nature and adventure is swamped. The temples are buried by high-rise hotels. The treks are too crowded to offer any fantasy of adventure. What’s left is buying things to take home.

At stage 3, the place is transformed into an exotic theme park with a huge specialty store. The hill people and other “natural” attractions are arranged like a zoo. The “traditional native products” are manufactured on industrial principles and sold through an ever-spreading flea market. Then add some of the bits of Thighlandia for good measure.

Thailand’s third tourist product is the festival. Mostly these have been marketed domestically. But in the last few years, the tourist authority has started turning these into export products.

Originally, Songkran was a subtle mix of two festivals found all over Asia. The first is an intimate rite of blessing by pouring water. The second is the world-turned-upside-down. For one day only, the hierarchy is upended, and social constraints are removed. Both these festivals have cultural meaning and social purpose. The rite of blessing brings people together. The day-of-misrule is an opportunity to release tensions and adjust hierarchies.

Songkran today has become a water fight. In essence, it’s a blown-up version of a paintball battle, a real world experience of a videogame splat fest. The underlying principle (as with battle simulations and arcade wars) is the exercise of violence, relieved of all its nasty consequences (blood and death). The rite of blessing has disappeared. The drama of misrule has been lost.

The current enthusiasm for tourism is more than Thaksin’s dream of a quick fix in a bad year, a yah bah [methamphetamine] pill for the economy. Last year, the World Bank produced a report on Thailand’s economic prospects after the crisis. Shorn of all the formal language, the report said: everything else is hopeless; turn Thailand into a theme park. The proposal now is to double tourist arrivals in a handful of years. That means another Pattaya, another Phuket, another battered “Rose of the North”, another “Splatkran”.

PHUKET IN THE SPOTLIGHT

– UNDER the new tourism plan, Phuket has been named an international city to generate an extra 50 billion baht (US$1.1 billion) annually from tourism. However, excess tourism has already placed a heavy drain on the island’s natural resources.

There once was an estimated 272sqkm of inland and mangrove forests on Phuket but the area under cover now has decreased to just 32sqkm and continues to shrink every year.

An influx of immigrants from other provinces has resulted in about 50 slums housing at least 100,000 people. These people live in unhygienic surroundings without adequate utilities. And as they are not registered as residents of Phuket, funding is not made available to improve their living conditions.

Phuket is also notorious for its high number of Aids inflicted. It was the 20th worst-affected province in 1996, but today it is second only to Phayao and is the worst-affected in the South.

There also are political problems. Local bodies are heavily influenced by local gang-lords and corrupt politicians. This has contributed to the rape of the natural resources. The local bodies only protect the interests of their overlords. For example, attempts to introduce zoning, which would bar activities damaging to the environment such as shrimp farms and elephants treks for tourists, have consistently been rejected. Shrimp farms continue to encroach on forest reserves, while the elephants destroy the coral when carrying tourists into the sea.

The authorities are aware of the problems caused by the shrimp farms but do nothing to enforce a law introduced in October 1997 banning the farms. Shrimp farmers have said they will accept zoning but all operating farms must be allowed to continue. There is also opposition to the zoning of elephant camps. Operators say introducing zones now would disadvantage those operating outside the designated areas. Plans for night entertainment zones have been rejected on the same grounds.

Zoning was tried in 1976, when the Tourism Authority conducted a tourism development study. The idea was shelved because it could have affected land use by the rich and powerful. Laws intended to protect the environment carry no weight on the island. The destruction of coral is just one example of the flouting of the law, with the excuse that tourism activities are an important money-spinner.

Hotels encroaching on beaches has been another longstanding problem in the island province. One five-star hotel continues to operate, despite a Counter Corruption Commission ruling calling for the rescinding of its operating licence. The Phuket governor has simply ignored the order.

Even if the government can develop Phuket as an international tourism city, there could be more adverse effects on the local people. "Of course, income from tourism will rise. But the lives of local people may deteriorate because of the higher cost of living. Who will take care of these people?" Charn Wongsatayanon, chairman of the Phuket Chamber of Commerce, recently noted at a seminar on the international city plans.

Chavalit na Nakhon, an adviser to the People's Rights Project, a group representing local people, said, "People's representatives have never been invited to a meeting on the international city campaign. The only private sector people joining such meetings are businessmen. Villagers have never been told how the promotion plan will affect their lives."

The island attracts three million tourists already each year, vastly overwhelming the 250,000 residents, so the island could already be considered an international city, albeit a poorly organized one. Without direction, investors have pushed development too fast for any environment protection measures or efforts at sustainable development to keep pace.

Lately, there has been talk of developing Phuket into a cyber city, a free port and now an international city. But with all of this talk, no one has suggested a remedy to the problems of environmental damage, the slum developments and the gangland activities which bedevil the island. 

[bonobo]

TAT finally put together a decent television ad for foreign markets, but for a long time, they have really lagged. Malaysia, on the other hand, has aggressively put together a marketing campaign which leaves the impression that the country is wall-to-wall beaches, golf course, ethnic festivals, and the like. China, and Vietnam have done more advertising than Thailand, but Malaysia is doing the most.

COmpare Malaysia to Thailand, and it just doesn't have the tourist infrastructure nor sights, but you would never know that from the ads. I wonder how effective they have been and how many Thai-potential tourist have been siphoned away to Malaysia?

[TAWP]

'Siam Simon' timestamp='1299108773' post='4254705']

Why would anyone be concerned about tourism anyway , they are often touted as such a minimal monetary input into Thailand , even expats who contribute millions into the local economies are treated as mere second class citizens , made to jump through hoops to stay , then treated as ' Ignorami ' who are not listened to for a wealth of suggestions to improve life for all .

When Thai improve the size of the welcome mat and hone up on how to treat visitors to their country , maybe , just maybe , tourism may improve to a scale where TAT can provide honest numbers , sorry , did I mention a word not contained in the Thai dictionary ?

How did you get to be a 2nd class citizen? What's your secret? I've been here 6 years and I'm only a 4th class citizen.

1st class: white skin Thai people

2nd class: dark skin Thai people

3rd class: dogs

4th class: me

Dress well, behave well, have a decent job with a title you can say without causing resentment ('real-estate agent' is out etc), and you will end up between 1 and 2 in no-time.