Q4 arrivals in for a plunge

“Tourists are taking the flooding seriously, and if the ocean tides reach Bangkok, we might lose an even bigger number of tourists,” Sisdivachr Chevaratanaporn, president of the Association of Thai Travel Agents (ATTA), said yesterday.
Until year-end, 800,000 to 1 million fewer foreign tourists are expected than during the same time last year.
The final quarter of the year is the traditional peak tourist season, with more than 4 million visitors. Millions of travellers also come during the first quarter of each year.
ATTA said many holidaymakers from Europe, Japan, mainland China and Taiwan had cancelled trips to Thailand.
The association also believes that many businesspeople from Japan and other countries will suspend travel to the Kingdom until the flood waters recede.
Aree Hapermpool, sales and marketing manager for Garuda Indonesia, said the airline’s executives in Indonesia had been informed of the cancellation of a meeting at a luxury hotel on the Chao Phraya River in Bangkok out of fear of flooding.
Anake Srishevachart, president of the Thai-Japan Tourism Business Association, said individual tourists and small groups from Japan had postponed plans to vacation in Thailand to avoid the flood crisis.
Groups with many members were still organising trips to Thailand, but switching from Ayutthaya and nearby provinces to unaffected destinations such as Ratchaburi and Nakhon Pathom.
The association and ATTA said it was too early to estimate the total damage, as the flooding was not yet over.
Anake, who had just returned from Japan, said officials and operators there still believed that the whole country is under water, and that had caused a lot of tourists to wait and watch the situation.
“They heard news reports that many Japanese factories in Ayutthaya were flooded but they didn’t know that other provinces are still safe for travel,” he said.
Anake’s company has received cancellations from a few groups in Japan, but big groups from other countries such as China that travel on charter flights will visit Thailand as planned.
“My Japanese assistant based in Bangkok goes to Taksin Bridge every day to check the water level with no worry. But we have still had postponements and cancellations like other companies,” he said.
Sisdivachr and Anake said it would be very difficult to reach this year’s tourism target of 17 million arrivals, despite 12 million already coming in the first nine months.