Confidence of tourists will be hit by blasts
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Tourism business operators believe that Tuesday's bomb blasts in Bangkok will have a slight impact on the industry in the current first quarter of the year, according to a survey by the Centre for Economic and Business Forecasting (CEBF) of the Universit
However, further incidents would have a longer and larger impact on the economy – especially due to an increase in travel warnings issued by embassies, the number of which could exceed 20. Currently 13 embassies are posting terrorism warning messages in Thailand, said Thanavath Phonvichai, the CEBF’s director.
During the current quarter, the number of foreign tourists is expected to drop by 100,000-200,000 and the nation will lose Bt20 billion in tourism revenue, Thanavath said.
However, the situation will begin to rebound in the second and third quarters and the incidents will have a marginal impact on the economy of 0.1-0.2 per cent.
The survey was conducted on Wednesday, with 650 samples from trading, services, and production businesses. Of the total, 42.7 per cent were small businesses, 30.5 per cent medium, and 26.8 per cent large.
According to the survey, 87.2 per cent said the explosions would have some impact on the tourism industry. Of the total, 20 per cent said the impact would be “big”, and 37.8 per cent said “medium”.
Moreover, 51.1 per cent of the participants said they were not sure how large the impact on their business would be, while 45.7 per cent said they had not yet seen any impact.
When asked about business during the next three months, 76.1 per cent said there would be no impact on the number of local travellers, and 39.1 per cent said the same of foreign tourists. Also, 56.5 per cent believed that the incidents would not result in any tour-package cancellations and also 42.2 per cent said the incident would not affect their earnings.
Thanavath said the issue varied from country to country and included backpackers. For example, he said European tourists realised such incidents can happen anywhere, and this would have a slight impact on the industry. Asian tourists are quite worried, he said.
