Total tourist arrivals may decline 15-20 per cent this year

Supawan Tanomkieatipume, vice president for marketing at Thai Hotels Association, said tourists in more than 40 countries were still worried about their security and safety under martial law.

She said advance bookings for hotels, especially in Bangkok, for the coming high season had not increased as expected. Hotels in other major destinations such as Chiang Mai and Phuket have received a lot of new bookings thanks to direct flights. Pattaya is also doing better than the capital.

“Potential tourists in key markets such as Japan, India, Russia and Europe still worry about unrest. If there were no martial law, they would already have prepared for vacations,” she said.

In terms of international arrivals, the best year for Thai tourism was 2012, the year after the flood disaster. Tourism last year was hit in the final quarter by the political conflict and this year was once again disturbed by the military coup.

Earlier, the Association of Thai Travel Agents (ATTA) reported that arrivals from the top 40 tourist sources had dropped by between 10 and 60 per cent during the first eight months, and the major reason was political uncertainty under a military regime.

As the high season begins, the private sector is disappointed with the lower number of Chinese visitors coming during China’s National Day Golden Week because of a lack of charter flights. However, ATTA is confident that Chinese will return to the country in the remaining months thanks to the waiver of visa fees for tourists from mainland China and Taiwan. 

“About 500,000 [mainland] Chinese and Taiwanese tourists are expected to visit Thailand this month,” said ATTA president Sisdhivachr Chevarattanaporn.

Before the military seized power from the elected government, Thai tourism authorities had forecast total arrivals of 28 million this year, but that was lowered to 25.5 million while revenue now is expected to be Bt1.2 trillion. The 2015 forecast for domestic travel is 135 million trips and revenue of Bt700 billion.

As for a new security proposal to give tourists wristbands carrying their personal details while travelling in the Kingdom, representatives from the travel sector said this was not a good idea, as tourists would not feel comfortable with it. Tourism operators instead urged the authorities and police to adopt other measures to lower the crime rate and make visitors safer, such as installing security cameras and improving lighting in public areas.