Thailand’s tourism income dangerously concentrated in top provinces, ex-TAT chief warns
Former TAT governor Yuthasak Supasorn has warned that Thailand is failing to distribute tourism income, with the top five provinces capturing more than 70% of total revenue while most of the country is left behind.
Thailand is facing severe tourism income concentration, with just a handful of provinces capturing the vast majority of revenue while much of the country sees little benefit, according to Yuthasak Supasorn, former governor of the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT).
Citing a statistical and economic analysis based on monthly and provincial data for 2025, Yuthasak said the country generated around 2.86 trillion baht in tourism revenue, but that the benefits were distributed extremely unevenly.
Top provinces dominate tourism revenue as inequality widens
The top five tourism-earning provinces — Bangkok, Phuket, Chon Buri, Surat Thani and Chiang Mai — generated a combined 2.01 trillion baht, or 70.25% of nationwide tourism revenue.
The top 10 provinces accounted for 81.34% of total tourism income, leaving the other 67 provinces to share just 18.66%.
Bangkok alone generated 899.368 billion baht, or 1,921 times more than Amnat Charoen, the province ranked 77th, which brought in only 468 million baht. Revenue from Phuket alone, at 540 billion baht, was higher than the combined total of the 50 provinces at the bottom of the ranking.
Yuthasak said the figures pointed to a deeply uneven tourism structure. Leading destinations such as Phuket derive 92% of their tourism revenue from foreign visitors, while Bangkok receives 69% from international tourists. By contrast, most secondary provinces depend mainly on Thai visitors, whose spending per head is much lower.
Foreign visitors, not tourist numbers, determine provincial wealth
Yuthasak said a further sign of the imbalance emerged from the Gini coefficient. Inequality in visitor numbers stood at 0.55, a moderate level, but inequality in tourism revenue surged to 0.82, an extremely high level.
The data suggest Thailand has not failed to spread tourists geographically, but has failed badly to spread tourism income. Many travellers do visit secondary cities, but they tend to spend little, often because those trips are brief stopovers or same-day visits that do not generate meaningful local income.
An econometric model used in the study found that a foreign tourist generated around 40,000 baht in revenue, while the coefficient for a Thai tourist was close to zero. Yuthasak said this showed clearly that the single biggest factor determining how wealthy a province becomes is the number of foreign tourists it attracts.
A yield analysis, measuring average revenue per visitor, also revealed stark differences. In Phuket, one tourist generated an average of 38,651 baht. In Krabi, the figure was about 16,451 baht, and in Bangkok around 15,801 baht. At the other end of the scale, Nong Bua Lamphu generated just 1,246 baht per visitor, while Amnat Charoen generated about 1,577 baht.
Regionally, the South held the largest tourism market share at 33.6%, led by Phuket and island destinations, while Bangkok alone accounted for 31.4%. The 20 provinces in the Northeast, despite being home to Thailand’s largest population base, shared just 4.1% of the tourism market.
Japan, Italy and France offer models for better distribution
To address the imbalance, Yuthasak pointed to successful tourism-distribution models from Japan, Italy and France.
Japan has used regional revitalisation campaigns, including free domestic flights for foreign tourists continuing on to secondary cities, to ease overtourism in Tokyo and Osaka and redirect travellers to places such as Setouchi and Kyushu.
Italy’s Albergo Diffuso model has turned old villages into so-called widespread hotels, using local homes as accommodation and the village centre as a shared hospitality hub. The approach helps preserve culture and generate local income without large-scale hotel construction.
France, meanwhile, has promoted travel by high-speed rail instead of short-haul flights and introduced restrictions on short-term rentals in major cities, helping distribute visitors more widely to regions such as the Loire Valley and Provence.
For Thailand, Yuthasak proposed four main solutions: improving connectivity and inter-modal transport between major and secondary cities; offering tax or cash-back incentives for overnight stays in the 10 lowest-ranked provinces; upgrading community accommodation under a community-based premium model inspired by Italy; and supporting domestic digital booking platforms such as TAGTHAi so more revenue flows directly to local operators.
He warned that unless Thailand moves urgently to spread tourism income more evenly, inequality will worsen and could become a much harder social problem to fix.
Yuthasak said adopting a model closer to Japan’s approach, using technology and incentives to redirect tourists, could offer the fastest and most practical solution for Thailand.
