Thai hotels recover as foreign tourists return in droves: CBRE

The positive trend in the tourism sector started last year and continued this year, resulting in increased hotel room occupancies, said Atakawee Choosang, head of hotels at CBRE Thailand.

He said that the trend was propelled by the return of Chinese tourists following China’s lifting of quarantine requirements for its nationals returning from overseas trips.

Many Chinese tourists came to Thailand on large group tours.
CBRE Thailand expects 10,000 more hotel rooms to be added to the market by the end of 2025, an increase of 12% in Bangkok alone, Atakawee said.

Despite the return of foreign visitors, the government is still focused on maintaining demand from Thais as part of its campaign to promote domestic tourism, he said.

He pointed out that many hotels performed better in terms of the average daily rate in December last year when compared to the same month in 2019, the year before the Covid-19 pandemic struck.

However, the hotel room occupancy rate for all of last year was still much lower than the pre-pandemic level in 2019 due to the smaller number of foreign tourists.

Atakawee said he expects hotel owners to pay more attention to controlling operational costs by investing more in technology while retaining their workforce at current levels.

Many hotel workers who lost their jobs during the Covid-19 pandemic seem reluctant to return to the industry, Atakawee noted.

“The hotel owners will devote their time and resources to make sure that they are in the position of benefiting from an expected increase in tourist arrivals. This is meant to boost their profits following years of business loss,” he said.

The CBRE Thailand executive also pointed to increased opportunities for investors to take over hotels in Thailand. “The confidence in the market is much better now,” he said.