Tourism council expects up to 5.7 per cent more visitors in 2017
By SUCHAT SRITAMA 
THE NATION

 

BANGKOK: -- THE NUMBER of international arrivals next year is expected be between 33.7 million and 34.3 million, an increase of 3.7 to 5.7 per cent from the estimated 32.5 million this year, according to the president of the Tourism Council of Thailand (TCT).

 

“The number of foreign tourists will increase in the coming year, but the growth rate will not be as high as the nearly 10 per cent that officials predicted early this year, mainly because of global economic instability and the crackdown on zero-dollar tours from China,” Ittirit Kinglake said yesterday. 

 

Foreign tourists are expected to generate revenue of Bt1.8 trillion in the coming year, while total tourism revenue, including the domestic market, will be Bt2.4 trillion.

 

The TCT also predicted that 8.1 million tourists would travel into the Kingdom during the first three months of the New Year, up 3.6 per cent from the first quarter of 2016. However, arrivals from China will likely drop by 30 per cent during the Chinese New Year from the 2016 figure of around 500,000.

 

Full story: http://www.nationmultimedia.com/news/business/EconomyAndTourism/30302589

 

-- © Copyright The Nation 2016-12-22

 

Blah, blah, blah...... And yet more blah. Wish this ministry would give it a rest. Every second day announcing some new bs numbers to the media. Just shut up for a while while! Sheesh!

Get Real!...It's dead in Thailand now

Get Real!...It's dead in Thailand now

But.....but.....but this number is from the wise Council and not some number the Minister of Tourism pulled out of their personal derrière. This number has been scientifically calculated from the average number pulled from a collection of derrières. Nate Silver might approve.

Meanwhile at the neighborhood tourist attraction that caters to both Farangs and Chinese, but not the Chinese bus tours, business is down this year by about 50%.

"mainly because of global economic instability and the crackdown on zero-dollar tours from China,” Ittirit Kinglake said yesterday. 

 

Thailand hurt itself by cracking down or shaking down the zero-dollar tours?  How does that failure in governance stack up to the failed rice pledge?  Hard to figure out who is looking out for the whole Thai Economy.  The inbred elites are protected as we all know. 

and they won't be able to rely on many Indians coming  either...................

 

 

http://www.acting-man.com/?p=48196

As usual they blame other factors for any downturn and use the same old excuse for just about everything these days....."global economic instability".

 

In spinmeister talk they really mean global economic instability with the exception of Thailand whose economy is not only incredibly stable but also going gangbusters and will produce a GDP of around 3% (which is less than half of most of it's ASEAN neighbours).

 

arrivals are not necessarily tourists. For those of you that don't know, TCT is located in the same building as TAT in Bangkok

2 hours ago, webfact said:

Foreign tourists are expected to generate revenue of Bt1.8 trillion in the coming year....

 

Bt 1.7 trillion of that will be accounted from wallets left behind in taxis.......

I would not believe  this until T.A.T comes forward to

confirm these figures .

regards worgeordie

1 minute ago, worgeordie said:

I would not believe  this until T.A.T comes forward to

confirm these figures .

regards worgeordie

Wasn't the current leader going to clamp down on fake news. My suggestion is start with the TAT as they are consistently publishing tosh.

 

More BS  

The downturn in Tourism is in part attributed to the lack of trust many foreigners feel in regarding the Thai government agencies to ensure any problems are dealt with fairly .

There have been and many are still ongoing cases in which the glaring incompetence of the investigations as gone viral around the world .

No matter how they spin it , Thailand is not as safe as they would like everyone to believe, and Thai attitudes have hardened.

There are still good holidays to be had here  at a reasonable price but the scams of dual pricing and overt foreign price is a disgrace and racist but Thailand refuses to accept that .

Does any journalist ( and I use the term loosely ) at the Nation ever read what they write ?

32.5m tourists over 365 days is 89,000 / day. 16,389 over the 3 busiest days of the year on 65 charter flights  

Someone should be slashing their wrists, not popping champagne corks.

 

 

Never mind the total number of visitors, never mind about the daily spending. Track

the total spent buy tourists and where they come from. A Chinese tourist on

a three day junket contributes far less that a year round ex-pat or a western tourist

on vacation for 2-4 weeks but they each count as one tourist to the TAT.

The Chinese tourists do little more than clog the airports. Don't get me wrong

they still help the Thai economy but the TAT has to quit patting itself on the

back with grossly misleading statistics.

1 hour ago, worgeordie said:

I would not believe  this until T.A.T comes forward to

confirm these figures .

regards worgeordie

Yup, but sorry - gotta say it again: Pigs will fly   

 

Ulic: obviously they understand the concept that you can go forward by patting yourself on the back. 

 

 

 

Edited December 22, 20169 yr by lvr181
Additional text

It keeps going up...up...up so that in a year or two no other country will have any tourists 'cos they'll all be going to Thailand Ha!

They trot out these projections, every time they get scared, and see the numbers dropping. Who was it that said, if you tell the people something often enough, eventually they will believe it? Well, not us. We are not buying your simpleton lies. Tourism is declining by the day.

Perhaps 50 years from now, in a hospitality industry class at a university here, they will discuss how Thailand lost the golden egg of Western tourism. Those tourists, unlike most Chinese tourists, spent anywhere from $100 a day, to over $1,000 a day. They brought real money into the country, and in exchange, were treated with utter and complete disregard, scammed, disrespected, and abused. Eventually, most said no more. Thailand thought the country was something very special, and that nobody would ever say no, or find alternative places to visit. The fact is that there are countless other spots, that offer better service, more expertise in food and beverage (especially wine), reasonable import duties to sustain a luxury goods market, better training, and far better english skills. Thailand simply lost sight of the big picture, and had very little vision, with regard to big spending tourists, who need to be catered to, instead of scorned.  

The real solution is about encouraging tourists, and ex-pats, 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. 

So, what happened? The Western tourists started to decline in number, and the genius minds at the TAT decided it was time to "lure" the Chinese. They came. But, they did not spend much money. Hotels, restaurants, gift shops, jewelers, galleries, spas, massage shops, bars, and countless other businesses suffered, and will continue to suffer from this extreme myopia, on the part of the officials in charge of tourism. Oh well. Can't say they were not warned. 

It is a real shame, as I find most Thai people to be quite lovely, friendly, warm, helpful and fun to be around. I am sure many feel the same way.

 

I expected them to expect this

7 hours ago, PatOngo said:

What does $1 get me? Yes the TIT propaganda department is coming out with guns blazing. The hub of optimism. I would worry more about the tourists that get a "rejected" stamp on their holiday loan. The old fly now pay later bird will soon have its wings clipped. 

Frankly the quality of Thaivisa poster commentary is far inferior to the quality of TCT's projections.

 

Not to pick on Thaivisa posters exclusively, every farang in Thailand has their own BS opinions about tourism here and 99.9% pay no attention to the actual numbers.

 

Which are easy enough to find: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourism_in_Thailand#Statistics

 

• Earlier this year, TCT predicted around 10% growth. A reasonable estimate - growth/loss in the last 4 years was +16%, +19%, -7%, and +20%, respectively.
• TCT has always cited Chinese arrivals as a major driver of growth - Accurate, if perhaps understated. From 2013-2015, Chinese arrivals grew by 3.3M. So did total arrivals. Not a lot of change in countries other than Japan, Korea, and Russia, honestly, but you can see the breakdown on WIkipedia if you're interested.
• After the NCPO cracked down on Chinese tourism operators, Thailand experienced a 10% drop in October year-on-year arrivals. TCT have now revised their total estimate for 2016 to 5% growth. Again reasonable since the year is almost finished at higher growth rates, but Q4 arrivals will be sharply down. Can't really blame TCT for not knowing what the bosses would do when they made predictions earlier in the year.

So unless you believe they are cooking the books on the official statistics (which is probably correct on some level, but not enough to change the trends), it looks to me like they're getting their projections basically right. It's not a hard job.

 

There's always a lot of uninformed speculation on the tourist numbers. Bottom line is there have been a ton of Chinese cheap Charlies coming to the country in the past few years, now leaving as fast as they came. Not much else has happened - Russians are down sharply, somewhat offset by Koreans, Taiwanese, and some other Asians.

 

Of course average length of stay, average daily spend, and so on are other interesting factors to talk about. (I reckon high spend still comes mainly from Westerners and Japanese, note that Western arrivals have not changed much, Japanese are down, draw your own conclusions). But if you don't have some real numbers around this stuff then give the sour grapes a rest please.

 

Edited December 22, 20169 yr by itsuptome

' Tourism council expects up to 5.7 per cent more visitors in 2017'

 

Based on what, exactly? If anything.

11 hours ago, Lingba said:

Get Real!...It's dead in Thailand now

 

I guess the groups of chinese are on the islands or in the hotels.

 

I was among loads of Koreans last weekend but rarely saw them, they stay in their room all day i guess.

 

Pattaya was very quiet but i read the chinese were all on walking street, we didn't go there.