Thais cancel travel plans to Turkey as demonstrations continue

A representative of Thaitravelcenter.com and Thai Travel Info service, the travel agency focusing on overseas markets, including Turkey, said yesterday many customers had called the office and expressed their concerns about visiting Turkey.

The source said some customers have already decided to cancel bookings to Turkey and shifted to other destinations in East Asia, while many others are still waiting to see how the situation unfolds.

"The high season in Turkey just ended last month. It is out of the travel season now," the company said.

The Foreign Ministry said its mission there has issued a travel advisory. However, the protest is claimed to be an internal political conflict and tourists are not targeted.

Supawan Tanomkieatipume, vice president for marketing at the Thai Hotels Association, said the growth of arrivals from Turkey has continued to drop for the third year due to economic problems and political chaos.

Turkey was once an emerging market for Thai tourism, but it seems hard to encourage visitors to go to the country now, and Turks are in trouble so they might not venture overseas.

Economic woes in many countries and political problems will pressure Thai tourism for one to two more months, so operators are expected to face difficulties even though the high season is approaching.

Key source markets are expected to bounce back quickly. Hong Kong, for example, lifted the travel alert from red to yellow, perhaps buoyed by the appearance of Hong Kong movie stars supporting Thai tourism on Tuesday.

Yuthasak Supasorn, governor of the Tourism Authority of Thailand, said Hong Kong was a very important source of short-haul, high-spending visitors.

"Hong Kong is one of Thailand’s main Asian source markets. From January-July, Hong Kong arrivals totalled 417,224, up by 87.4 per cent over the same period of 2014 and generating an estimated Bt14.92 billion in tourism revenue, up by 101.8 per cent," he said.