Not out of the woods yet

Thailand’s tourism revenue could be down by as much as 30%, this year, while arrivals at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport were down 20.38 until the end of July.

International tourist arrivals at Suvarnabhumi Airport for seven months up to the end of July are the latest indicator that shows the country’s tourism is not out of the woods yet.

Backing that prognosis, the Tourism Council of Thailand’s estimates that the tourism business has already lost 30% in revenue, this year.

Office of Tourism Development’s statistics, for tourist arrivals, January to July, collected at Bangkok’s, show a 20.38% decline from 6,546,290 during the same period last year to 5,211,969.

All the top supplying markets delivered declines.  Visitors from Japan were down 29.73% from 696,242,  January to July last year, to 489,220. UK was down 9.71% from 420,046 to 379,365. China was down 37.31% from 535,203 to 335,500. India faced a 1.47% decline from 318,708 to 314,018. The US dropped 17.14% from 360,567 to 298,771. Germany declined 8.18% from 276,995 to 254,325.

The only good news focused on European markets that showed a slight increase for the month of July, as opposed to the general declines of the last seven months in that market. India, too, continued to deliver positive arrivals.

In July,  arrivals from the UK were up +1.45% from 54,851 to 55,646; France +2.43% from 30,758 to 31,504; Germany +1.73% from 27,894 to 28,377; Netherlands +6.87% from 23,439 to 25,049; Italy +6.08% from 10,695 to 11,345; Russia +2.04% from 10,294 to 10,504; Switzerland +1.14% from 10,339 to 10,457; Norway +10.35% from 7,180 to 7,923; Belgium +3.53% from 7,432 to 7,694; and Finland +1.24% from 2,974 to 3,011.

Tourism Council of Thailand president, Kongkrit Hirunyakit, reported there was also a decline  in tourism service pricing of around 10 to 20%, which resulted in a loss of tourism revenue of around 30%.

The council estimates that tourist arrivals will decline 20%, this year, but it hopes that the European market could deliver a sustained positive performance by the last quarter this year.

“Although we have not yet seen any improvement in forward bookings there are some markets that improved during July alone. We might see positive figures for European markets later in the year,” said Mr Kongkrit.

“But it is still not evident whether the Asian markets will recover this year or not.”

Meanwhile, OTD also released statistics for tourist arrivals collected at all checkpoints for all modes of transport for the first half of the year.

It showed a decrease of 14.82% from 7,755,798 last year to 6,606,706 this year. The top five markets were: Malaysia with 840,086 arrivals representing a 0.37% drop; Japan with 448,463 arrivals representing a 28.72% drop; UK 402,867 arrivals, down 6.98%; Laos 356,727 arrivals an increase of 29.28%; and China with 331,614 arrivals down 37.15%.

Kuwaiti produced the largest increase of 41.79% from 12,502 last year to 17,727 this year. The biggest decline was in Korea with a 44.95% drop from 535,699 to 294,921 this year.