Red light for travel to Thailand
April 29, 2010 by Chanida Sa-ngiamphaisalsuk
Filed under News
Tourism Authority of Thailand has confirmed that 10 countries have issued the highest possible alerts that state citizens should not travel to Thailand.
There are 47 travel warnings advising visitors to avoid Bangkok and exercise extreme caution while travelling in the country but this is the first time that so many nations are warning citizens that the entire country should be off limits for all but essential travel.
It is recognised by the travel industry as an insurmountable setback for attempts to buy a way out of the crisis through public relations and advertising campaigns.
The Ministry of Tourism and Sports hope to get a Bt1.6 billion budget to go on the offensive, but there are concerns that it would be wasted as long as the country’s image as a peaceful and hospitable destination takes a beating worldwide media.
The 10 countries that are advising citizens to stay away are: Saudi Arabia; United of Arab Emirates; Spain; Hong Kong; China; Czech Republic; Taiwan; Vietnam; Germany and the UK.
The latest advisories update came from Vietnam, Germany and UK.
The UK limit advisory will be update again 30 April while Vietnam’s travel advisory says it ban on travel temporary.
Of the 47 countries issuing warnings, 25 countries announced advisory at level 4 which state that citizens should reconsider their travel plans. They include Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Indonesia and France.
Many tour operators including the global giant, TUI are suspending all tours to Bangkok until further notice.
Yesterday’s battle between red shirts and government forces in Pathum Thani province, 40 km north of the city centre, that resulted in 87 injuries and the death of a soldier indicate unrest is not just confined to the city centre that is currently held hostage by 10,000 hard core red shirt protesters.
The pitch battles between army and protesters, yesterday afternoon, occured on a stretch of the main highway, just 7 km north of Don Mueang Airport and 3 km south of Rangsit in Pathum Thani province. It took more than six hours to clear the backlog of traffic.
Potentially dangerous protests have been held in many provinces, negating the popular argument in travel cirlces that the disturbances are limited to specific areas of the capital city and are not unduly concerning travellers.
In the meantime, the travel warnings have caused a substantial drop in passenger traffic through Suvarnabhumi Airport with some airlines flying with just a handful of passengers. Indonesia’s Bali, Singapore, which has just opened its casinos and theme parks, and Malaysia are all taking bookings that were earlier destined for Thailand.
There are also reports that Sri Lanka will benefit as European tour operators transfer clients to the beaches south of Colombo.
When I read “red light” I thought “hookers on street corners.” But nothing like that exists in thailand.
The top brass at TAT are all career bureaucrats. The closer they come to retirement, the less likely they dare to make any kind of decision about anything. So they spend money. That’s what they do best. And they shovel tens of millions of baht into grandiose and tasteless PR programs. That’s what they do best. Dealing with a crisis is beyond their depth.
Khun Suraphon, the new TAT governor is very enlightened after running TAT’s New York office for some years. And he has nothing to lose since he will retire at the end of his contract anyway. Although it is disappointing that there is no evidence of anything decisive coming from his office, you have to understand that the greatest leaders can fail of their followers do not really follow. Suraphon is in the same boat as Abhisit.
If things begin to look just too dangerous here, you can bet that most of the TAT brass will be on their way to a travel show abroad just about as fast as fast as Khun Potjaman can flee to Hong Kong. First class of course.
Thailand has it self to blame for this mess.
As I heard a comment the other day why go to the circus come to Thailand and
see a lot animals and clowns all feeding from the same bowl but you always
some who will try an get more than others.
I sorry I do not blame the people for staying away perhaps if we get our
act together we could save the country which use to be wonderful and good.
Countries that Thailand thumb its nose at in the past have now surpassed it.
Instead of looking for handouts for the regular corrupt ad and PR campaigns, shouldn’t the TAT (which sounds awfully like a rude English word) be making contingency plans to evacuate the thousands of tourists who are going to be stuck if the threatened civil war starts? Instead of giving fat contracts to cronies (hey, why not have a film festival?) TAT should have a crisis management plan that involves all foreign embassies, hotels, airlines etc. to show that the country is prepared to protect the sacred foreign tourist brave enough to venture here. If tourists are targeted but once it will be the end forever of the tourism industry here, and no amount of adspend will save it, nor will it save the bacon of the TATs running the show.