CNA Report on Thailand tourism

[fedssocr]

So, they're still going to try the "high quality over high quantity" tourism thing.

 

[PeterRS]

If that video rams home one point it is how disastrous the effects of covid and the tourism decline has been on the ordinary Thais who were barely able to scrape by without their usual sources of income.

As for as those heading the tourism drive, without 16+ million Chinese tourists they probably have no alternative but to try and attract high spenders. Without them the industry and the economy as a whole has no chance of getting back to where it was in 2019. Then again Thais rarely admit they are wrong and so they will push on with the high-end tourism drive until either it's a success or they quietly and without publicity open the doors to far more lower-end tourists and backpackers.

But the tourism industry is not doing itself much good the way prices for items like hotel rooms have been hiked. Hotels are never going to get back to anything near capacity when prices for many have been jacked up by 100%. We were thinking of a short staycation just in Bangkok. For August the price of the hotel we stayed in for a long week-end in February is now about 120% of the earlier rate we paid. To raise all prices and not have a menu of different prices to suit different budgets seems counter intuitive. The much smaller numbers of high-end tourists will pay for higher end rooms. So why not have a smallish number at lower rates? We've just abandoned our staycation

[fedssocr]

There's such a huge glut of hotels that it's going to be difficult for all of them to make it. 

[PeterRS]

That glut is going to continue. We were told some years ago that the new mega-construction project 'One Bangkok' covering a large part of Rama 4 (and which has resulted in the demise of the old Dusit Thani Hotel) will include five luxury hotels!