Thailand Eyes 30 Million Tourists In 2015

[Payboy]

Chinese, Russians & muslims will fill the gap.

They may "fill the gap", but Thailand needs massive incremental tourists, not replacements.

But I do agree. Add Indians and budget Australians, and plan accordingly.

Have seen Indians checking in at Suvarnabhumi with cartloads of flat-screen televisions. That must be helping the industry if not the tourism sector.

[h90]

I hope all those new visitors will enjoy the special welcome they will get in Phuket from the transportation mafia; perhaps its a new way to promote medical tourism?

I recently was in Phuket and saw the Immigration total crazy. Many tourists had the arrival card filled out incomplete. One man, definitely an idiot got shouted at:

"You go back home!" Most did not know the address where they stay, Immigration was OK with the hotel name, but a family told they came for Scuba diving and get picked up by the dive center and have no idea yet where they stay.....

a) Form is without guide

Immigration officers are very impatience and rude

c) Immigration officers English is very limited and they don't have anyone for any other question....Immigration should have some basic knowledge in Russian, Mandarin, French and Spanish if you want to attract tourists. Just 1 person.

[h90]

That new bunch of ministers ..lol ..oh you've got to love them..travel insurance..for a tourist from a Thai company - The claim will be forgotten as soon as the plane takes off. If they want quality tourists then they need some quality attractions. Not bemoaning Thailand, but its worn out and tired, the once famous beaches are a mess of low quality development gone crazy, the temples are knackered, crowded (but still a pleasant day out) and the National parks are shrinking by the day, lacking species coupled with a grossly biased two tier entrance system and as for the scams and other tourist <deleted> - When I leave I sure as hell won't return as a tourist. Good luck

JC, I concur.

Thailand tourism has seen it's best days. The usual places are old, tired and faded, rife with corruption, dirty and inhabited by transplanted Thai's chasing the mythical "gold rush" fever.

Unless the get an F1, a new Casino, Disneyland or discover magnificent ancient ruins, then my guess is tourism will only grow marginally in the next 4 years.

There is only so far the exotic reputation, average beaches, temples, elephant treks, bargirls and full moon parties can take you.

"Miracle Thailand". That just feels like the marketing department projecting their doubting attitude into a slogan.

Bargirls did the trick in the past...they'll do it in future.

[Payboy]

Bargirls did the trick in the past...they'll do it in future.

Hallelujah!

[rheinwiese]

Didn't we heard that before????

The Nation (30.4.2001)

Opinion

WELCOME TO THIGHLANDIA

The prime minister 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”.

[khunron13]

If they're going to depend on the "quality markets" Taiwan, Korea and China, they'll need to double the number just to keep the same income levels. Can you say...kineow!