Red Shirts Could Put Thai Tourism in the Red

Despite political unrest in Bangkok, the Tourism Authority of Thailand is sticking to its target of 15.5 million tourist arrivals this year, up from 14.1 million in 2009. TAT announced that Thailand had 4.6 million foreign arrivals in the first quarter, up from 3.6 million last year.

The Association of Thai Travel Agents (ATTA) said that for tourists visiting or planning to visit Thailand, the demonstrations have not affected popular tourist destinations, particularly those outside Bangkok, nor have they affected the safety of foreign tourists who have never been targeted in the on-going political conflict.

The country’s transportation system, including all its airports, operates normally, according to the travel agent group.

The protests are led by rural-based supporters, many impoverished, of former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin, who are called Red Shirts for the T-shirts they wear. Thaksin was ousted in a coup in 2006 backed by the revered Thai king.

The Red Shirts want the current Thai PM Abhisit Vejjajiva to dissolve parliament can hold new elections. As this was posted, the Associated Press was reporting from Bangkok that the Thai government was offering talks with the Red Shirts.

The protests, staged in Bangkok’s main shopping district, were peaceful for weeks before April 10, when 21 died in a confrontation with Thai troops. Red Shirt demonstrations have devastated the retail and travel businesses in the city’s main shopping district.

Despite the Thai Tourist Authority’s sanguine outlook, ATTA president Surapol Sritrakul told Gulf News that the number of tourists in Thailand for the Songkran New Year festival April 13-15 had declined.

“Tourist arrivals have been cut in half basically to just 3,000-4,000 per day in April from 6,000-8,000 in the first quarter,” Surapol said.

And according to Bangkok golf tour operator, Golfasian Co., Thailand’s Fiscal Policy Office warned that Thai tourism arrivals could decline 20% this year. Golfasian said that some analysts predict that up to $500 million could be lost from the Thai economy, as subdued Songkran (Thai New Year) celebrations April 13-15 hit retail and tourism businesses hard.

The president of the Thai-Japan Tourism Association told Gulf News that no new bookings were coming in from Japan, a major market for Thai tourism.

Tour operator All The Best Travel Co., Ltd. said that many Japanese tourists had returned home or cancelled trips after the clashes; authorities back home had advised them to go to China, South Korea or Vietnam instead.

Bangkok-based golf tour operator Golfasian Co. reported that the heads of state across ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) called for peaceful solutions to the political standoff.

“The deteriorating situation in Thailand between demonstrators and government security forces in Bangkok has caused a serious concern among ASEAN member-states and the world at large,” ASEAN Secretary General Dr. Surin Pitsuwan said in a statement this week.

A number of governments, including those of the U.S., China, Japan and South Korea, have issued advisories on travel to Thailand.

“Our concerns are two-fold,” said Mark Siegel, CEO of Golfasian Co., which issued a statement on the situation.

“While 99% of the country’s hotels and golf courses and restaurants are operating as normal, the more important concern is that we continue to have dozens of clients in country. We have to look out for their welfare and assure them that their safety isn’t an issue because, in my view, it isn’t.”

Siegel, an American who has lived in Thailand since 1995, continued: “There can be no minimizing the fact that 21 people are dead. But the reality is, I was all over Bangkok that day, out to the airport and downtown, and if you weren’t surfing the Net or watching TV, you would not have known anything was amiss. The demonstrations and ultimately the violence has been restricted to very small, very specific areas of an enormous city. And the rest of the country is unaffected.”

Siegel said the second concern is the long-term toll these events will take on Thai tourism — one of the country’s largest industries.

“It’s hard to strike the right balance in assessing the effects going forward,” said Siegel. “It’s disrespectful and simply untrue to assert that things are going forward as normal, and will go forward as normal. This is the worst political violence in 20 years.

 “But it’s also true that this is a country where the military has staged 18 separate coups since the 1930s, a country where politics are raucous and protests are common place. I mean, the past week’s event have shaken the Thai people. No question. But from a tourist perspective, things will recover quickly. They always have.”

Comparisons to the most recent political strife in Thailand are imperfect but instructive, Siegel said. In December 2008, red-shirted protestors staged a peaceful but extremely disruptive protest at Suvarnabhumi, closing the international airport for three days.

“There was no real violence there, at all, but that incident spooked a lot of travelers and prompted a lot tourists to change their plans,” Siegel said. “No one would have predicted it, but 2009 turned out to be our biggest year ever in terms of golfers. Things rebounded much stronger than anticipated.”

According to a Golfasian spokesman, golf is a huge market for Thailand, which is the major destination for Asian golfers. He told Travel Market Report, “Koreans and Japanese routinely spend a week golfing in Thailand each winter because most of the courses in those countries are private, so average golfers must leave the country to play a good deal of their golf. This dynamic is ever more true in China, which is the fastest growing golf market in the world. Australians love it because it’s cheap and the seasons line up: when it’s winter down under, it’s high season in Thailand.”

Thailand’s links, he add, are  gaining favor among European and North American golfers, who are increasingly looking past long flight times to the very low prices for golf, hotels, food, etc. Visit www.golfasian.com.