Fears of fresh violence spook tourism industry
The resurgence of political demonstrations is considered a key factor that will hurt confidence in the tourism industry in the third quarter of the year, says the Tourism Council of Thailand (TCT).
However, the scale of the impact will depend on how violent the demonstrations are. Kongkrit Hiranyakit, the TCT’s president for policy and planning, said that if the situation became widespread and out of control, it was unavoidable that the tourism industry would be hit.
The council expects that in the third quarter, the confidence index among tourism operators will be lower than in the second quarter, which posted 85 according to a survey of 600 operators nationwide. In the index, 100 is the baseline, and scores below that level indicate lower confidence.
In the first quarter, the index was 94. Operators said there were still clouds over the industry, including local and global economic uncertainty, commodity inflation, higher living costs, and a rise in the minimum wage.
Now operators are concerned that a new round of political rallies will result in a repeat of the street chaos that damaged the tourism industry a couple of years ago. In the second quarter of 2010, the confidence index plunged to 33.
Many said confidence in the tourism industry had been on the rise since then, even amid natural disasters, especially the big flood at the end of last year. Kongkrit said the industry had one year to breathe and now the 2010 situation was set to repeat itself. Foreign countries are taking a close look at Thailand to monitor the extent of the problem.
It is unclear how the political scene will unfold during the rest of this year. Although parliamentary sessions planned for this week to consider the reconciliation bill have been postponed, the situation is tense. The yellow-shirt group, which strongly opposes the bill, called off its demonstrations after the postponement, but announced it would rally again if there were signs that the government was moving ahead with the bill.
The survey also found that tourism operators in the Southern region had the lowest confidence of 68 after the second-quarter tourism season drew to a close. It found that most operators, especially in the hotel and tour businesses, remained concerned about the local economy.
