23 Million Foreign Tourist Arrivals In Thailand In 2013

[Tomtomtom69]

23 million going once, twice....do I hear a 24 million estimate?....yes, yes, a new govt report now estimates 24 million....going once, twice,....yes, yes, we now have a 25 million estimate from a tourism group....hard telling where this guessing bidding will end. Note: these estimates are based on the assumption of a perfect world and the gullible.

I agree and how much is too much? Thailand seems to be like the only country in the world where each year many millions more tourists visit than the previous year at least according to the TOT. Do Thais really all want to see more of these tourists, especially if they are not engaged in the tourism industry themselves? I think not...but they are too nice to say enough is enough. Seriously...what is so good about mass tourism?

[lemoncake]

23 million going once, twice....do I hear a 24 million estimate?....yes, yes, a new govt report now estimates 24 million....going once, twice,....yes, yes, we now have a 25 million estimate from a tourism group....hard telling where this guessing bidding will end. Note: these estimates are based on the assumption of a perfect world and the gullible.

I agree and how much is too much? Thailand seems to be like the only country in the world where each year many millions more tourists visit than the previous year at least according to the TOT. Do Thais really all want to see more of these tourists, especially if they are not engaged in the tourism industry themselves? I think not...but they are too nice to say enough is enough. Seriously...what is so good about mass tourism?

i do not think TOT is making any numbers, the TAT is though

[Nisa]

On the tourist count, it is complete tosh. They are clearly counting in-transit folk and whatever else. The real tourist number is around 15 million.

You suspect that that 5 to 8 million people (about 50%) of international visitors at the airport are actually people with connecting flights but for some reason decide to go through the immigration lines at the airport only to have to re-enter security and immigration lines? What would be the purpose of so many folks doing this when smoking is available in the airport and all the shops are located within the international area? Do this many people really book flights on separate itineraries causing them to have to go out and recheck their bags?

I am not saying the numbers are perfect but just don't believe they are that far off and if somebody passes through immigration then they should be counted as a visitor and would guess just about every other country defines visitors the same way.

do tell me where and how they do the numbers with evidence of course, since you love to post links

Data on on arrivals and departures are based on arrival and departure cards collected at land, air and sea borders. This provides country of origin and length of stay as well as statistics on volume at each entry/exit point including the country of origin using this immigration point. Spending is done through surveys. Internal tourism is done through surveys and data collected from from Thais who stay overnight at a hotel.

This information is available on the UN World Trade Organization site which you are welcome to visit but you have made clear you will not let facts stand in the way of your claims that international visitors are on a decline in Thailand and have made clear you won't believe any data from Thailand unless you think it backs up your claims but even those links you have provided discredit your claims or are completely irrelevant. The facts are that Thailand is a top international tourist destination, other countries in the region are also seeing similar growth in tourism, the airports continue to see record number of passengers each year, hotel construction is booming, in 4 of the last 10 years Thailand has been clear to state they had a decrease in number of international arrivals, more routes and frequenies of flights to Thailand over the years to meet demands ....... but why bother you with facts as I have already stated and you have made clear, you won't let facts or reality stand in the way of your very illogical belief that tourism in on a great decline in Thailand.

[Rimmer]

Inflammatory post removed

[WilliaminBKK]

On the tourist count, it is complete tosh. They are clearly counting in-transit folk and whatever else. The real tourist number is around 15 million.

You suspect that that 5 to 8 million people (about 50%) of international visitors at the airport are actually people with connecting flights but for some reason decide to go through the immigration lines at the airport only to have to re-enter security and immigration lines? What would be the purpose of so many folks doing this when smoking is available in the airport and all the shops are located within the international area? Do this many people really book flights on separate itineraries causing them to have to go out and recheck their bags?

I am not saying the numbers are perfect but just don't believe they are that far off and if somebody passes through immigration then they should be counted as a visitor and would guess just about every other country defines visitors the same way.

do tell me where and how they do the numbers with evidence of course, since you love to post links

Data on on arrivals and departures are based on arrival and departure cards collected at land, air and sea borders. This provides country of origin and length of stay as well as statistics on volume at each entry/exit point including the country of origin using this immigration point. Spending is done through surveys. Internal tourism is done through surveys and data collected from from Thais who stay overnight at a hotel.

This information is available on the UN World Trade Organization site which you are welcome to visit but you have made clear you will not let facts stand in the way of your claims that international visitors are on a decline in Thailand and have made clear you won't believe any data from Thailand unless you think it backs up your claims but even those links you have provided discredit your claims or are completely irrelevant. The facts are that Thailand is a top international tourist destination, other countries in the region are also seeing similar growth in tourism, the airports continue to see record number of passengers each year, hotel construction is booming, in 4 of the last 10 years Thailand has been clear to state they had a decrease in number of international arrivals, more routes and frequenies of flights to Thailand over the years to meet demands ....... but why bother you with facts as I have already stated and you have made clear, you won't let facts or reality stand in the way of your very illogical belief that tourism in on a great decline in Thailand.

Nisa very detailed thank you, I would just like to add - residence entered is also a factor. In other words a Thai living abroad for more than 10 months would either be classed as returning resident or visitor.

There is logic behind the system

[DocN]

"There is logic behind the system "

Aha...suuuuuuure!

Okay...here is my question and I will underline it with a little story.

Story first!

A guy holds a passport, which is almost full with visa- stamps, so he goes to the embassy to order a new passport.

Shortly after that, he takes his old passport to the immigration to recieve a visa- extention.

After he recieves the new passport along with a paper from the embassie, his old passport is made invalid, of course.

Pretty unlucky: his old passport gets into the laundry, so the visa- extention- stamp is blurred.

When he goes for his visa- run to Laos, the border- police has some difficulty to identify the date on the stamp.

Instead of taking a look into their computer to determin, that passport- holder Mr. X, Nationality: Y, Passportnumber: 12345, Arrival/Departurecard No. XY 0815 has a XYZ- visa with extention to the date blah blah....they just state, that such data doesn't exist, pull a number out of their behind and make Mr. X pay 3.000 Baht for overstay!

Now given the fact, that the arrival/departure cards have a BAR- CODE...that obviously is filed NOWHERE, to even detain matters as important as visa- data...do you REALLY believe, the data is correctly used for other, not closely as important stuff, such as...let's say...determine the total number of visitors to Thailand???

[Nisa]

"There is logic behind the system "

Aha...suuuuuuure!

Okay...here is my question and I will underline it with a little story.

Story first!

A guy holds a passport, which is almost full with visa- stamps, so he goes to the embassy to order a new passport.

Shortly after that, he takes his old passport to the immigration to recieve a visa- extention.

After he recieves the new passport along with a paper from the embassie, his old passport is made invalid, of course.

Pretty unlucky: his old passport gets into the laundry, so the visa- extention- stamp is blurred.

When he goes for his visa- run to Laos, the border- police has some difficulty to identify the date on the stamp.

Instead of taking a look into their computer to determin, that passport- holder Mr. X, Nationality: Y, Passportnumber: 12345, Arrival/Departurecard No. XY 0815 has a XYZ- visa with extention to the date blah blah....they just state, that such data doesn't exist, pull a number out of their behind and make Mr. X pay 3.000 Baht for overstay!

Now given the fact, that the arrival/departure cards have a BAR- CODE...that obviously is filed NOWHERE, to even detain matters as important as visa- data...do you REALLY believe, the data is correctly used for other, not closely as important stuff, such as...let's say...determine the total number of visitors to Thailand???

What in the world is your point? That because a person (assume one of these friend of a friend stories) in an unusual situation of his own doing goes to the border with an unreadable visa extension stamp (more unusual) that is not a departure card, has no bar code and is not used in determining arrival and departure data, instead of going to immigration who provided the stamp that his arrival and departure was somehow not counted properly based on his arrival and departure card?

Kind of getting ridiculous in terms of the lengths we can go to try to discredit numbers. Yes, they are not perfect but they are considered accurate and accepted by relevant international bodies & organizations as being accurate and there is tons of information to back up the data given the details of what nationality is arriving and departing at what point. Some border points don't even have computers or are sometimes not online and just like before computers were around, it doesn't stop people from being able to count and later correlate data. More importantly that the number of people's dogs eating their visa extension (sorry was it putting passport in the wash?) each year is going to be relatively the same and not have an impact on the fact that the data is clear in showing an increasing trend of international visitors to Thailand.

By the way, not entering extensions (especially a 7-day one as this seems to be) into a nationwide computer system would not be that surprising and again would have absolutely nothing to do with calculating number of foreign visitors, what their country of origin is, how long they stay, what point they arrive or depart the country or the average they spend. If you want to make a case that numbers for people who receive extension (never seen any published data) then you may have a point if this numbers are compiled by the Laos border agents and not the immigration office who tracks and provides these and there are lots of people whose dog ate their visa extension page or decided launder their visa extension.

Edited December 17, 2012 by Nisa

[DocN]

"There is logic behind the system "

Aha...suuuuuuure!

Okay...here is my question and I will underline it with a little story.

Story first!

A guy holds a passport, which is almost full with visa- stamps, so he goes to the embassy to order a new passport.

Shortly after that, he takes his old passport to the immigration to recieve a visa- extention.

After he recieves the new passport along with a paper from the embassie, his old passport is made invalid, of course.

Pretty unlucky: his old passport gets into the laundry, so the visa- extention- stamp is blurred.

When he goes for his visa- run to Laos, the border- police has some difficulty to identify the date on the stamp.

Instead of taking a look into their computer to determin, that passport- holder Mr. X, Nationality: Y, Passportnumber: 12345, Arrival/Departurecard No. XY 0815 has a XYZ- visa with extention to the date blah blah....they just state, that such data doesn't exist, pull a number out of their behind and make Mr. X pay 3.000 Baht for overstay!

Now given the fact, that the arrival/departure cards have a BAR- CODE...that obviously is filed NOWHERE, to even detain matters as important as visa- data...do you REALLY believe, the data is correctly used for other, not closely as important stuff, such as...let's say...determine the total number of visitors to Thailand???

What in the world is your point? That because a person (assume one of these friend of a friend stories) in an unusual situation of his own doing goes to the border with an unreadable visa extension stamp (more unusual) that is not a departure card, has no bar code and is not used in determining arrival and departure data, instead of going to immigration who provided the stamp that his arrival and departure was somehow not counted properly based on his arrival and departure card?

Kind of getting ridiculous in terms of the lengths we can go to try to discredit numbers. Yes, they are not perfect but they are considered accurate and accepted by relevant international bodies & organizations as being accurate and there is tons of information to back up the data given the details of what nationality is arriving and departing at what point. Some border points don't even have computers or are sometimes not online and just like before computers were around, it doesn't stop people from being able to count and later correlate data. More importantly that the number of people's dogs eating their visa extension (sorry was it putting passport in the wash?) each year is going to be relatively the same and not have an impact on the fact that the data is clear in showing an increasing trend of international visitors to Thailand.

By the way, not entering extensions (especially a 7-day one as this seems to be) into a nationwide computer system would not be that surprising and again would have absolutely nothing to do with calculating number of foreign visitors, what their country of origin is, how long they stay, what point they arrive or depart the country or the average they spend. If you want to make a case that numbers for people who receive extension (never seen any published data) then you may have a point if this numbers are compiled by the Laos border agents and not the immigration office who tracks and provides these and there are lots of people whose dog ate their visa extension page or decided launder their visa extension.

It is absolute useless, talking to you!

Believe the holy Thai- government, the TAT and take everything they say for granted!

Be patronizing, don't even try to understand!

Thailand is the land of milk and honey, everything is right here...except the things you don't like, of course, which we will be informed soon enough!

Thanks for the talk and watch out for the Cobras in your garden!

By the way: it is okay for you, that they don't file visa- and passport- data, connected with arrival- cards in a computer system in the absolutely highly unlikely case someone has his passport stolen or damaged or lost it (happens once in only 100 years, I guess! Totally unlikely!), but the numbers they spew out, based on boder-crossing or plane arrivals are nonetheless 100% accurate!

EFFFING 7eleven can make a nationwide system of barcodes work...but the immigration can't!

Wow!

[Nisa]

"There is logic behind the system "

Aha...suuuuuuure!

Okay...here is my question and I will underline it with a little story.

Story first!

A guy holds a passport, which is almost full with visa- stamps, so he goes to the embassy to order a new passport.

Shortly after that, he takes his old passport to the immigration to recieve a visa- extention.

After he recieves the new passport along with a paper from the embassie, his old passport is made invalid, of course.

Pretty unlucky: his old passport gets into the laundry, so the visa- extention- stamp is blurred.

When he goes for his visa- run to Laos, the border- police has some difficulty to identify the date on the stamp.

Instead of taking a look into their computer to determin, that passport- holder Mr. X, Nationality: Y, Passportnumber: 12345, Arrival/Departurecard No. XY 0815 has a XYZ- visa with extention to the date blah blah....they just state, that such data doesn't exist, pull a number out of their behind and make Mr. X pay 3.000 Baht for overstay!

Now given the fact, that the arrival/departure cards have a BAR- CODE...that obviously is filed NOWHERE, to even detain matters as important as visa- data...do you REALLY believe, the data is correctly used for other, not closely as important stuff, such as...let's say...determine the total number of visitors to Thailand???

What in the world is your point? That because a person (assume one of these friend of a friend stories) in an unusual situation of his own doing goes to the border with an unreadable visa extension stamp (more unusual) that is not a departure card, has no bar code and is not used in determining arrival and departure data, instead of going to immigration who provided the stamp that his arrival and departure was somehow not counted properly based on his arrival and departure card?

Kind of getting ridiculous in terms of the lengths we can go to try to discredit numbers. Yes, they are not perfect but they are considered accurate and accepted by relevant international bodies & organizations as being accurate and there is tons of information to back up the data given the details of what nationality is arriving and departing at what point. Some border points don't even have computers or are sometimes not online and just like before computers were around, it doesn't stop people from being able to count and later correlate data. More importantly that the number of people's dogs eating their visa extension (sorry was it putting passport in the wash?) each year is going to be relatively the same and not have an impact on the fact that the data is clear in showing an increasing trend of international visitors to Thailand.

By the way, not entering extensions (especially a 7-day one as this seems to be) into a nationwide computer system would not be that surprising and again would have absolutely nothing to do with calculating number of foreign visitors, what their country of origin is, how long they stay, what point they arrive or depart the country or the average they spend. If you want to make a case that numbers for people who receive extension (never seen any published data) then you may have a point if this numbers are compiled by the Laos border agents and not the immigration office who tracks and provides these and there are lots of people whose dog ate their visa extension page or decided launder their visa extension.

It is absolute useless, talking to you!

Believe the holy Thai- government, the TAT and take everything they say for granted!

Be patronizing, don't even try to understand!

Thailand is the land of milk and honey, everything is right here...except the things you don't like, of course, which we will be informed soon enough!

Thanks for the talk and watch out for the Cobras in your garden!

By the way: it is okay for you, that they don't file visa- and passport- data, connected with arrival- cards in a computer system in the absolutely highly unlikely case someone has his passport stolen or damaged or lost it (happens once in only 100 years, I guess! Totally unlikely!), but the numbers they spew out, based on boder-crossing or plane arrivals are nonetheless 100% accurate!

EFFFING 7eleven can make a nationwide system of barcodes work...but the immigration can't!

Wow!

Not sure about all that but bottom line is tourism is on a rise in Thailand and your story about visa extensions stamps given out at immigration has absolutely nothing to do with anything even remotely related to counting the number of foreign arrival and departures and logically makes absolutely no sense at all in trying to dispute the numbers because if you use logic such as airport traffic, airline reports, hotel construction, numbers from other countries in the region, numbers from other countries about where their citizens visit and a host of other things it becomes clear that as is accepted around the world that Thailand is a extremely popular destination for travelers and has seen a big trend up in foreign visitors for a very long period as has many countries in the region. Then if you even look at the TAT numbers you will realize that in the past 10-years they have been able to admit in 4 of those years there was a decrease in foreign arrivals over the previous year dispelling any nonsense about the inability to admit when things don't go as planned or hoped.

[DocN]

Talk to the hand...

[Globeman]

And probably 22 million flying off from Thailand to other destinations. No tourists in Pattaya ( that is westerners ) and none up north, so where are they all hiding ????

No tourists in Pattaya? Haven't all the old school expats been complaining of the number of Russians teeming about the place? Oh yeah and mainland Chinese (they may not be Westerners, but they still count as tourists)... And do you really reckon there are 22 million Thai tourists going abroad? Or was this hyperbole?