Political unrest stalled Thai tourism

BANGKOK, 19 November 2014: Tourism and Sports Minister Kobkarn Wattanavrangkul projects Thailand’s tourism will reach 25 million trips by year-end admitting the political crisis lopped off at least a million leisure trips this year.
She claimed that was due to political turmoil, late 2013 through the first half of 2014. Tourism arrivals will drop by 1 million to reach 25 million visits.
“Political instability was the key reason for the decline during the first half of the year, however, the enforcement of martial law did not cause a significant impact on the country tourism,” she said.
inside no 3 Most tourism executives would disagree with the latter conclusion as they look at their figures and recognise that the substantial dip on the performance graph was caused by martial law and a coup. Martial law is still in place, but the negative impact has lessoned during the final quarter of the year as overseas tour operators and consumers come to terms with the situation. However, martial law did have a massive negative impact on tourism regardless of what the novice tourism minister might think.
However, she correctly noted that “there are now good signs of recovery as room reservations, for December, have risen by 6% year-on-year.”
The tourism ministry permanent secretary, Suwat Sidthilaw, earlier admitted that it would be difficult to meet earlier targets and raise tourist arrivals to 28 million this year.
He said the year would close with 25.5 million visits and THB1.8 trllion in tourism revenue. The original target was 28 million foreign tourists and THB2 trllion in tourism related revenue.
For January to September this year, there were 17,558,999 visits to the country decreasing 10.28% from 19,571,685 over the same period last year.
Last year, the kingdom attracted 26,735,583 international tourists increasing 19.60% from 22,353,903 visits. Tourism revenue generated THB1,171,651.42 million in 2013 up 19.08% from THB983,928.36 million in 2012.

sourced:ttrweekly.com