Hi guys,

Without boring you all with every detail of my business idea I have just a few questions regarding the legality of my plan.

Is it possible to start up a tour business in a country such as the UK, for example, take all bookings through this UK based company and then employ a Thai in Thailand to carry out the tours. The Thai tour guide (TTG) could be self employed/working freelance for the UK company.

If the TTG had an up to date tour guide license would they be legal running these tours for a company that was based outside of Thailand?

I look forward to reading any replies.

Thanks

Do you think all the Chinese guides have licenses?

I think is difficult. Travel operators are required to be Thai businesses and have a TAT license. In order to get this, correct me if I am wrong on the number, but you need 1 Thai director and a min. Guarantee. So to summarize you might not be eglible.

I would guess, note guess that you should be ok IF the business is actually run out of the uk and you can get a self employed Thai tour guide. On that basis, payment to him would probably need to be from the uk in response to an invoice.

The real question is can a Thai tour guide be self employed, or do they have to work under the umbrella of a TAT licensed company?

Yes Blackcab, I think this may be the next question...

Might be better to set up the business in UK or wherever and look for existing tour operations with a proven track record in Thailand that will sell their services to you at a discount to the retail price you charge your customers.

I assume if you would be operating out of UK you would need to provide some guarantee of delivery and quality. If some free lance tour guide in Thailand totally screws up or is a no-show when your customers arrive here, they'd probably be able to recover the money paid you, in particular if you used credit card facilities. On the other hand you'd probably find it difficult to impossible to get refunded any money you paid out to individuals or businesses here.

Although you didn't want to go into details about your plans, I think these days there already exist so many ways to book travel, accommodations and, if needed, tour guides, that generating business and controlling it from some remote location is going to be extremely difficult regardless of TAT rules & regs.

Unless the OP is in Thailand and is simply looking for a way round the licensing requirements.

What I suspect he will find is that freelance tour guides are not allowed and that they must be under the umbrella of a TAT licensed company.

Think about it - why would anyone get a license and give a 100,000 baht guarantee to TAT if all they had to do was go freelance?

If your interested we have a licensed TAT travel agency and can provide you with services and are willing to cooperate, You can contact [email protected],

According to WTO docs, Thailands doesn't allow that kind of trade.

I wasn't able to attach this in the last post. Unbound cross border trade is not allowed for tourism agencies in Thailand. But you can invest upto 49% in a tourism agency in Thailand.

Wow, great responses guys.

Yes the idea was simply to avoid the 100,000 baht license fee to operate a website for a Thai business. The website would be registered to a UK company and all marketing would be online. I will be here in Thailand overseeing as much as I can get away with whilst my girlfriend (TTG) is actually taking the tours. However maybe not possible as she would not be worked under a TAT umbrella as mentioned above.

We have our own independent itinerary that we are wishing to work with as we feel it is different from whats currently available.

Will probably have to piggyback from somebody elses license, however I'm not sure if that allows me to independently advertise our website?

I guess on the website it would have to say "Part of the 'such and such tour group" in small print at the bottom..?

Thanks again