Central bank admits crackdown on zero-dollar package tours has greater impacts than earlier projected

[Haecksler]

Great explanation digibum

An old trader wisdom:

Do not put all the eggs in one basket!!

[spidermike007]

Once again, the point is being missed, by those within the government side of the tourism industry. It is not about cracking down on zero baht tour operators. That is only going to damage tourism. It is about encouraging others, from countries that spend real money, to come here and visit. That message seems to have gotten lost, in the fervor to court the Chinese tourists, many of whom do not spend much money at all here. 

 

I suspect the glory days of the Western tourists, who spend $100 to over $1,000 dollars a day (many people I knew who visited spent $1,000 a night on their hotel alone!) while here in Thailand, are behind us. I am not sure if that market can ever be recovered. Policy is just too off the mark, and there is little that is being done to either address their issues, or attract them back. The decline continues. 

[spidermike007]

 

 

 

•  

Edited December 2, 2016 by spidermike007

[mike324]

11 hours ago, digibum said:

 

 

They're bashing them because, as usual, Thailand thought it could have its cake and eat it too.  They courted all of these Chinese tourists full well knowing that this is how the game worked but they needed the numbers so they looked the other way to get them.  Then, once they start coming, they decide to lay the hammer down and make them pony up cash and they quit coming.  

 

Thing is Thailand did not court these "zero dollar" chinese tourist. Chinese tourist are all over the world, being probably the #1 tourist arrivals for many countries in the past 5 years. Step foot in any big european / asian cities, its full of chinese tourists along with chinese speaking staff at name brand boutiques.  Yes you will find zero dollar / cheap tours that go to countries such as Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. Europe not the zero dollar tours due to price of plane tickets and hotels, but Europe has cheap chinese tours as well.

 

 

[digibum]

44 minutes ago, mike324 said:

 

Thing is Thailand did not court these "zero dollar" chinese tourist. Chinese tourist are all over the world, being probably the #1 tourist arrivals for many countries in the past 5 years. Step foot in any big european / asian cities, its full of chinese tourists along with chinese speaking staff at name brand boutiques.  Yes you will find zero dollar / cheap tours that go to countries such as Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. Europe not the zero dollar tours due to price of plane tickets and hotels, but Europe has cheap chinese tours as well.

 

 

 

Okay, perhaps Thailand did not say to itself, "Hey, you know what we need?  Zero dollar tourists."  But they did court China very, very, very heavily after the financial crises in 2008.  India too.  

 

Now, if you know the Chinese are big on the zero dollar thing and you court Chinese tour operators . . . . are you not courting Chinese zero dollar tourism?  

 

It's sort of like saying, "I wasn't trying to find a crazy Thai girlfriend" but then only dating bar girls.  

 

 

[GiantFan]

BOT is basically saying that the Chinese are NOT zero baht tourists.  Whoever started this rumor should be made to wai sincerely!

[digibum]

3 hours ago, spidermike007 said:

Once again, the point is being missed, by those within the government side of the tourism industry. It is not about cracking down on zero baht tour operators. That is only going to damage tourism. It is about encouraging others, from countries that spend real money, to come here and visit. That message seems to have gotten lost, in the fervor to court the Chinese tourists, many of whom do not spend much money at all here. 

 

I suspect the glory days of the Western tourists, who spend $100 to over $1,000 dollars a day (many people I knew who visited spent $1,000 a night on their hotel alone!) while here in Thailand, are behind us. I am not sure if that market can ever be recovered. Policy is just too off the mark, and there is little that is being done to either address their issues, or attract them back. The decline continues. 

 

There is absolutely nothing in recent Thai history to indicate that anybody in Thai government has a long-term view on anything.  I remember when TAT first announced their big push to get Chinese tourists and you could see this coming a mile away.  

 

But, hey, you only go 4 years or so between coups so it's not like a minister of anything even bothers to decorate their office in Thailand.  Plus you can publish whatever BS stats you want in the press even if the numbers don't add up.  So there's a near 100% guarantee that whatever you do, you will not be in office long enough to actually see the consequences of your actions.  

 

Thailand realized that the farangs weren't coming as much as they used to and weren't spending as much when they came so they doubled their efforts to enhance the tourism experience . . . just kidding.  They went to China and India and decided to whore themselves out as a place where people can come and poop on the streets and in the canals as long as they spend money.  

 

 

[performance]

Prayut and his closest had some urgent property deals and needed a quick feed. China is the perfect striking point. Dumb scared and add a few scamming Thais. lt was play of the day. Now the old fossils pay the price.

[Wazza1]

On 01/12/2016 at 6:02 AM, damo said:

You can't always have your cake and eat it too. 

 

Not true, if you eat half the cake you still have the cake and have eaten it too.

[nausea]

9 hours ago, spidermike007 said:

 

I suspect the glory days of the Western tourists, who spend $100 to over $1,000 dollars a day (many people I knew who visited spent $1,000 a night on their hotel alone!

Indeed, the whole Thai tourist industry was built on this, and the much despised low budget backpackers financed by those same relatively rich parents. Go to any Thai tourist destination and you'll find five star hotels, and cheap guest houses. Doing a bit of reverse engineering, I would suspect rich Chinese, and their scions, would rather visit London or Paris, Thailand is a Skegness destination for the Chinese.

Edited December 2, 2016 by nausea
Spelling

[Srikcir]

2 minutes ago, nausea said:

I would suspect rich Chinese, and their scions, would rather visit London or Paris

Good suspicion.

UK (#10) and France (#1) are among the top 10 countries rich Chinese visit for 2016.

https://list.juwai.com/news/2016/03/top-10-places-rich-chinese-are-visiting-in-2016

[nausea]

On 12/1/2016 at 6:52 PM, kkerry said:

The Bangkok Post last week reported the DMK airport manager saying tourist arrivals at the airport had dropped to 80,000 passengers per day, from 90-100,000 before the crackdown, but were starting to pick-up again.

 

BP also reported that at Suvarnabhumi, the airport manager there noticed a drop in Chinese tourists to 4,000 from 13,000 per day in August.

 

 

Oh, now you're being stupid, what have facts got to do with this.

[spidermike007]

35 minutes ago, nausea said:

Indeed, the whole Thai tourist industry was built on this, and the much despised low budget backpackers financed by those same relatively rich parents. Go to any Thai tourist destination and you'll find five star hotels, and cheap guest houses. Doing a bit of reverse engineering, I would suspect rich Chinese, and their scions, would rather visit London or Paris, Thailand is a Skegness destination for the Chinese.

 

 

I believe you are absolutely correct. It appears that only the lower and middle class Chinese visit Thailand. Those on an extreme budget. The rich ones, the equivalent of the kinds of Western tourists who used to come here in droves, before they were pushed away, go to London, Paris, New York, San Francisco, Vancouver, Los Angeles, Dubai, and other comparably luxurious spots, that are well managed, offer truly five star service, reasonably priced shopping due to a rational duty and taxation, and have fairly competent governments. 

[Grubster]

On 12/1/2016 at 10:36 AM, Anthony5 said:

 

I have that with Asians, but not with buses, I can fairly well distinguish between buses

 

What I wanted to say that one of the bus companies, coincidental the one that has the most buses on the road in Pattaya these days, caters to Korean tourists.

 

It's the one that has the blue, purple and pink lines on the side of the bus, and have their private NGV station on road #36

Those Koreans do spend money though. They plug up the golf courses here.

[Eric Loh]

On 2 ธันวาคม 2559 at 1:19 AM, onthesoi said:

Zero dollar tours are a scam to fleece tourists, the Thai government should be commended for cracking down, especially as some large Thai companies have been involved which are now being brought to heel.

 

Go Prayut ...

 

Either you didnt read the article or you simply do no understand what being written. Nevertheless a touching "chai yu" shout out to your hero. 

 

 

 

[dcnx]

Last night (Chiang Mai) I was driving past Thapea Gate and stopped my bike to see what the commotion was about in front of McDonalds. I walked up just in time to see a tuk tuk driver pull a metal rod out from his tuk tuk and hold it up as if he was going to hit the tourist with it, while yelling at him.

 

The army is stationed directly across the street and a few of them walked over and basically watched while this screaming maniac physically threatened a tourist with a weapon.

 

Turns out, this was all over a 100b dispute. The tourist kept his cool the entire time while the Thai went whacko. Eventually, the army boys stepped in and calmed him down. The tourist paid him the 100b and foolishly mumbled something as he walked away, which sent the driver into another rage. the army boys stopped him from attacking the tourist. The police never came but this guy clearly has no place driving anyone around.

 

All the while I'm thinking, THIS is why people don't return. Who wants to go on holiday to deal with people like this? It's absurd what they get away with.

 

Personally, I'm glad tourism is down. Let them suffer, each and every one of them. They all did this. The good ones are just as guilty for sitting by and allowing bad people to ruin the industry, so may they all starve together. I have zero sympathy. 

 

The fact that toirusm can't survive without ripping people off, goes to show they don't deserve tourists in the first place.

 

You reap what you sow.

[onthesoi]

1 hour ago, Eric Loh said:

Either you didnt read the article or you simply do no understand what being written. Nevertheless a touching "chai yu" shout out to your hero.

 

I already knew about 'zero dollar tours' prior to this thread so the article is superfluous . Maybe the failure to understand is all you.  Or maybe you think the Thai government should turn a blind eye to tourists being fleeced?

[anon467848]

If Oct. is a "high season" month and there are only 2.2 million arrivals, how on earth are TAT going to achieve their bullshit target of 30 million... the tourism golden goose is becoming interfertile.. NB good to see them acknowledging the true GDP number of 11-12%... so the downward spiral is going to hurt.. all good things come to an end, and the bell curve had to happen sooner or later and a correction was inevitable.. Time for TAT to 'man up' or should that be 'woman up' LOL...

[dcnx]

Last week I read a statistic regarding Vietnam. Of the people polled, a staggering 70% of the tourists said they would not return to the country. 

 

The government acknowledged this and mentioned the reasons why. There were 6 or 7 reasons the tourists gave, but all were listed and zero smoke was blown up the bum about the issue. They admit there are serious problems and they are to address them. Time will tell if they do, but they at least admit their failures.

 

There are so many issues here that would stop the average tourist from returning, starting with public transportation at the airport, getting scammed and/or double charged at every location, to random violence and poor service, as well as general safety. Even the police are on the take here. it's appalling. 

 

Sex tourists and deadbeat backpackers will always return, but the average tourist has many other choices, and there is no reason to keep returning to a country that abuses them. 

 

Having said all that... countdown to the next story about the honest cab driver who will return 2 million baht in cash to a tourist.

[Eric Loh]

1 hour ago, onthesoi said:

 

I already knew about 'zero dollar tours' prior to this thread so the article is superfluous . Maybe the failure to understand is all you.  Or maybe you think the Thai government should turn a blind eye to tourists being fleeced?

 

Do you then know that zero dollar tours are just not perculiar to Thailand and do you know that there was a meeting in 2005 between China, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia to discuss measures to control the zero dollar tours. None of the participating counties adopted the harsh measures like Thailand. The criticism here is that this is not a new development and the junta government's top down crackdown without consulting the stakeholders has now created a worse off problem. Malaysia and Indonesia laid out some effective measures and better law enforcement but not Thailand style crackdown and they now benefit of better inflow of Chinese tourists. This top down military style order in many other policies are hurting rather than helping the people. 

[GiantFan]

59 minutes ago, merlin2002 said:

If Oct. is a "high season" month and there are only 2.2 million arrivals, how on earth are TAT going to achieve their bullshit target of 30 million... the tourism golden goose is becoming interfertile.. NB good to see them acknowledging the true GDP number of 11-12%... so the downward spiral is going to hurt.. all good things come to an end, and the bell curve had to happen sooner or later and a correction was inevitable.. Time for TAT to 'man up' or should that be 'woman up' LOL...

I think that is bkk/dmk .  AOT numbers for all airports was 2.5 million for Oct.  Jan to Oct was around 28 million.  So 32m for the year is my estimate.  Under 10% growth, which should get some government types worried.

[onthesoi]

27 minutes ago, Eric Loh said:

 

Do you then know that zero dollar tours are just not perculiar to Thailand and do you know that there was a meeting in 2005 between China, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia to discuss measures to control the zero dollar tours. None of the participating counties adopted the harsh measures like Thailand. The criticism here is that this is not a new development and the junta government's top down crackdown without consulting the stakeholders has now created a worse off problem. Malaysia and Indonesia laid out some effective measures and better law enforcement but not Thailand style crackdown and they now benefit of better inflow of Chinese tourists. This top down military style order in many other policies are hurting rather than helping the people. 

 

If other countries don't want to protect their tourists that is up to them.  There could be many reasons why they don't want to act, not least the lost revenue from such scams. It doesn't necessarily mean they are doing the right thing, after all,  China, Malaysia and Indonesia are hardly shinning examples of the kid gloves approach to government.

 

I can tell you first hand the Thai government has been warning Thai companies for a while now, but they obviously thought they were too big and important to actually have to change their operating methods so the government was forced to act.

Edited December 4, 2016 by onthesoi

[Eric Loh]

3 minutes ago, onthesoi said:

 

If other countries don't want to protect their tourists that is up to them.  There could be many reasons why they don't want to act, not least the lost revenue from such scams. It doesn't necessarily mean they are doing the right thing.

 

I can tell you first hand the Thai government has been warning Thai companies for a while now, but they obviously thought they were too big and important to actually have to change their operating methods so the governments hand was forced

 

The reasons are plain to see. The crackdown has now greatly impacted the industry. So clearly that the other governments are doing the right thing, not this government. They should have taken better measures and forceful law enforcement, not a sledge hammer top down clampdown. 

[newnative]

3 hours ago, dcnx said:

Last week I read a statistic regarding Vietnam. Of the people polled, a staggering 70% of the tourists said they would not return to the country. 

 

The government acknowledged this and mentioned the reasons why. There were 6 or 7 reasons the tourists gave, but all were listed and zero smoke was blown up the bum about the issue. They admit there are serious problems and they are to address them. Time will tell if they do, but they at least admit their failures.

 

There are so many issues here that would stop the average tourist from returning, starting with public transportation at the airport, getting scammed and/or double charged at every location, to random violence and poor service, as well as general safety. Even the police are on the take here. it's appalling. 

 

Sex tourists and deadbeat backpackers will always return, but the average tourist has many other choices, and there is no reason to keep returning to a country that abuses them. 

 

Having said all that... countdown to the next story about the honest cab driver who will return 2 million baht in cash to a tourist.

The main issue stopping "average tourists from returning" is average tourists are likely to only ever visit a place once.  I had a nice time in Singapore, certainly Singapore does everything about as well as it can be done. Am I going back?  Not likely.  Same for other places I have been.  There are plenty of places I haven't visited, time is finite,  so I likely will visit only once.  Countries can certainly work on improving things so tourists will want to visit in the first place but even if things are great, lots of tourists will just be making one visit.

[mike324]

On 12/2/2016 at 1:17 PM, digibum said:

 

Okay, perhaps Thailand did not say to itself, "Hey, you know what we need?  Zero dollar tourists."  But they did court China very, very, very heavily after the financial crises in 2008.  India too.  

 

Now, if you know the Chinese are big on the zero dollar thing and you court Chinese tour operators . . . . are you not courting Chinese zero dollar tourism?  

 

It's sort of like saying, "I wasn't trying to find a crazy Thai girlfriend" but then only dating bar girls.  

 

 

 

 China open up a few years ago and every country has seen a massive influx of chinese tourists, so they welcome them with open arms. Increase tourism comes with the zero dollar tours, its not as if there was no zero dollars tours back then, no they did not court zero dollar tours on purpose / directly. Thailand can't pick which tourist it wants. The chinese has been the biggest tourist spender for many countries now too.

 

Not all bar girls are crazy.

[digibum]

17 minutes ago, mike324 said:

 

 China open up a few years ago and every country has seen a massive influx of chinese tourists, so they welcome them with open arms. Increase tourism comes with the zero dollar tours, its not as if there was no zero dollars tours back then, no they did not court zero dollar tours on purpose / directly. Thailand can't pick which tourist it wants. The chinese has been the biggest tourist spender for many countries now too.

 

Not all bar girls are crazy.

 

You can pick your tourists.  That's the whole point of having an immigration department and visas.