In my opinion there is nobody controlling or checking on the TAT folks. Madame can't be touched because she is the wife of a general.

Every penny spent on them is a waste.

20 year plan during a .....(can't say) is more of a total waste.

Operation clean sweep is the only answer to save what is left of real tourism.

They are promoting Thailand to Thais. How lame is that? It is like the owner of a hardware store advertising to his kids to shop in the store. Has zero incremental economic advantage to the country, only to the crony investors. The only initiatives a national tourism ministry has any business promoting are for incremental inbound tourism arrivals. Period. Full stop.

The OP talks about protecting local villagers from tourism. How reassuring that must be to those Pattaya and Phuket villagers.

If they could actually recycle some of the money back to the villages which a select few are making out of the Chinese hordes then that would be a good first step. It would be interesting to know just where that money goes. Much of it will be funneled back to China but what about the profits of the select few?

I read an article a few weeks back (sorry, I don't have a link). It reported on some trends in tourism that are relevant to Thailand.

1) Thailand has been trending toward more package tours

2) When comparing the money spent on package tours and by independent travelers, a higher percent of the package tour spending goes back to the country of origin.

The strategic implication is obvious; if a country relies too much on package tours, their tourism revenue will be adversely affected.

I wonder if TAT knows this?

TAT knows nothing about tourism.

The rate of knots the Thai authorities move at in dealing with the scams, they'll need all of that 20 years.