Thai Travel Revival
Thailand has long been a favourite destination for tourists, backpackers, and partygoers alike because of its stunning beaches, the energetic capital city of Bangkok, and friendly natives who are culinary enthusiasts. The number of people planning to visit the popular destination in Southeast Asia has steadily increased since nearly all COVID-19 travel restrictions abroad were relaxed in July. Travel trends and insights are shared by Sojern, a top supplier of digital marketing solutions for the travel industry, for an exciting new season.
To speed up a rebound in its tourism sector, Thailand relies on “revenge spending” by travellers and a surge of Americans and Europeans looking to escape their chilly winters at home for warmer climates.
Yuthasak Supasorn, the governor of Thailand’s Tourism Authority, forecasts a 30% growth in the average spending per trip for the country in the upcoming year. In the second quarter of this year, tourists spent an average of 55,000 baht ($1,443) on each trip, up 17% from the 47,000 baht before the pandemic.
Thailand’s tourism sector is starting to recover in 2022, but it will take a while for international arrivals to return to pre-pandemic levels; this isn’t likely to happen until 2024 at the earliest.
The Thai government is changing its tourism strategy to lessen its over-dependence on a few source markets and diversify its target customer groups in the coming years. This is done in recognition that China’s zero-covid policy will last well into 2023, as well as the challenging global economic outlook for that year and the emergence of new global technological trends and social changes.
In the medium run, the tourist sector will keep improving and play a significant role in the country’s GDP growth and foreign exchange earnings. Despite fewer visitors in 2023–2024 compared to the pre–covid period, the development of the tourism infrastructure will continue.
With monthly numbers exceeding 1 million in July and August, there is hope that the government’s yearly objective of 10 million visitors can be achieved. Suppose the rising trend in monthly arrivals continues in September through December, which will also be aided by the impending peak season for inbound tourism in November. In that case, it is possible to meet this goal.
Despite the remarkable rebound, Thailand’s tourist sector is still far from the pre-covid levels, when annual visits routinely exceeded 30m. Only 17% fewer people arrived in January through August of this year than during the same period in 2019. The breakdown of new arrivals by country reveals the root of the weakness. Compared to 2019, when China accounted for 28% of all arrivals to Thailand, only 3% of visitors came from China in January–August 2022. As of now, arrivals from ASEAN nations (37% of the total) and European nations (24% of the total) have been the main drivers of the recovery in 2022. Notably, from January to August, 4% (vs 3% in 2019) and 2% (vs 4% in 2019) of the total visitors were Americans and Russians, respectively; these percentages haven’t moved significantly since before the pandemic.
