Thailand’s tourism industry generated $60 billion in international tourism receipts in 2019, with each arrival spending $1,520 on average per visit, making it one of the world’s most profitable destinations.
Thailand looks ill-prepared for life without tourists as a fresh wave of contagion hits. The Southeast Asian country needs to wean itself off this economic crutch, but political instability stands in the way.
Gorgeous beaches, spicy food and temples draw a steady stream of travellers. The industry generated $60 billion in international tourism receipts in 2019, with each arrival spending $1,520 on average per visit, making it one of the world’s most profitable destinations.
World Bank data put the industry’s total contribution to GDP at $100 billion in 2018, about one-fifth of activity.
Hopes of a sharp rebound in visitors have now been dashed. Infections began shooting up around the same time as in India, showing a similar rise. The government, run by former general Prayuth Chan-ocha, failed to secure enough vaccines; Thailand has fewer shots per capita than Myanmar or Laos, per an Oxford University study.
Travel bubbles
Reuters estimates only 1 percent of the population has been fully jabbed. That makes it near impossible for Bangkok to pitch travel bubbles, especially with markets like China where inoculation has also proceeded slowly, making officials wary of re-opening borders.
Finance officials have now revised down their 2021 GDP growth forecast to 2.3 percent from 2.8 percent. The central bank held the benchmark interest rate steady at 0.5 percent on Wednesday, which leaves a little room to ease but not much. A weak baht is a blessing because the exports of goods and services account for a whopping 60 percent of Thai GDP, making it one of the most export-dependent economies in the world.
Thailand already suffers from the “middle-income trap”, and signs of stagnation are increasing. The poverty rate has been rising since 2015 per World Bank data. Tourism pads such traps by creating jobs for low-skilled people, but it doesn’t upgrade their skills much.
Nor do hotels, restaurants and massage parlors generate much innovation. In Thailand, tourists also support darker industries: prostitution and narcotics.
An indefinite tourism freeze puts pressure on the government to upgrade other parts of the economy, especially the key electronics, automotive and health sectors. And it will be a struggle to attract foreign direct investment against the backdrop of a simmering pro-democracy protest movement. But simply waiting for foreign visitors to return is not an option.
Vaccine tours
Travel agencies in Thailand are selling coronavirus “vaccine tours” to the United States, as some wealthy Thais grow impatient awaiting mass inoculations that are still a month away amid the country’s biggest outbreak so far.
The tours reflect global differences in vaccinations, with the United States and Britain making swift immunization gains, but many lower income nations – and increasingly their well-off citizens – are still working to secure doses.
Bangkok tour operator, Unithai Trip, has packages from 75,000 baht to 200,000 baht ($2,400 to $6,400) for trips to San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York, with prices dependent on the time gap between doses.
“Johnson & Johnson is one jab, but 90 percent of inquires want Pfizer,” which needs about 20 days between the first and second doses, the agency’s owner, RachpholYamsaeng, told Reuters.
He said a group was tentatively scheduled to leave next week.
My Journey Travel is offering a 10-day trip to San Francisco for a Johnson & Johnson shot and said it has received hundreds of calls in three days.
The vaccine tours could be a boon for Thailand’s tourism agencies after travel collapsed during the pandemic.
“All tour agencies are suffering now,” said Rachapol, whose agency is also offering similar trips to Serbia. “Whatever we can do, we have to try to do it.”
A spokesman at the US embassy in Bangkok declined to immediately comment, but the US State Department’s website lists medical tourism as a valid reason to visit.
The United States is not the only destination offered to Thais. Another agency, Udachi, advertised a 23-day “VACCation in Russia” to receive the Sputnik V vaccine for up to 210,000 baht ($6,700).
Thailand’s main vaccination drive is set to begin in June with locally-produced AstraZeneca shots.
Its latest outbreak has accounted for more than half of its total 74,900 infections and 318 fatalities. — Reuters
