Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video would suggest, we are discussing what I am deeming the sort of “Louis Vuitton paradox”. Why did I mention this? Well, I am bringing this up because I was reading a recent article in the Thai Examiner, that's thaiexaminer.com, the article is titled: Anutin: time to halt foreign tourism price deals, Thailand to be the Louis Vuitton of the world travel market. Let me give some background here. This is a really good article. It is quite long, I urge those who are watching this video to go check that out over at thaiexaminer.com. The gist of it was the Public Health Minister pointed out that Thailand should be casting itself as a premium tourism destination, it should halt price deals, it should not be going for cheap tourism, whatever. However you want to look at it. I am not trying to put words into anybody's mouth but that is the gist of it. And okay, I will be the first one to say I think Thailand is a premium market but as I will get into in this analysis, why price us out of anything? Why turn away tourists? I don't really get this. Let me go ahead and get into the quote before I do the analysis.

So as noted in the Thai Examiner, quote: "Thailand built its hugely successful foreign Tourism Sector on cheap sun, beer and entertainment over the last 60 years as air travel also expanded. Thailand has always been seen as a low-cost destination despite its long distance from many of its key markets with the country's weather, entertainment and hospitality sectors being key strengths that have built up the Kingdom's huge appeal over the last 6 decades." I would put a caveat onto that. I would say that Thailand has always been seen by some as a low-cost destination. There is a wide spectrum of tourists in Thailand. I am really always kind of baffled at times in Thailand or just in general when people get into an "either or" almost Hegelian kind of approach to analyzing everything; it's like "well we are either a low cost destination or we are a high cost one!" Well we can be both. We can have the Dusit Thani, the high end hotels, we can have them along with accommodations for people on a more budget conscious basis. I don't really see why the two need to be mutually exclusive from either side of that perspective. I find it interesting that there seems to be a push sometimes from the economy sector of the market that says "well, we are a low cost jurisdiction", well for some, and for some we are a high-end jurisdiction, we are a premium jurisdiction. I always think Thailand is a premium jurisdiction, frankly. Excuse me, speaking like a lawyer, premium destination and I think that folks that come here definitely get a bargain for what they oftentimes pay for all the great scenery, the history, the architecture of Thailand; just the uniqueness that is Thailand and also yeah of course the entertainment, the beaches, the sun, the tropical atmosphere, everything. Yes, it can be a bargain whilst also being a premium destination; it doesn't have to be "either or".

Quoting directly: "The country's rise as a tourism hub coincided with the mass availability and proliferation of air travel and airline routes with 2019 record being very much linked to maximizing transport and air travel links." Quoting further: "However, on Monday the emphatic advice from Minister Anutin who has been recently credited with Thailand's controversial move to legalize marijuana, and who made a name for himself for his hawkish stance on introducing and later removing pandemic restrictions, was that the key players in the still damaged and challenged industry should try to avoid offering discounts and package deals to incoming foreign tourists from around the world at this time."

Well I have done another video similar to this one and I think I would reiterate this here. Government folks sometimes need to realize, Government is a different beast, it is a different animal if you will than the private sector. The private sector is going to do what the private sector needs to do especially after 2 years of not having any appreciable activity, okay? The Tourism Sector has been down for 2 years folks. I can't stress that enough. Now while I do agree with Mr. Anutin's sentiments, Thailand is a premium destination; it's a great place, there's no doubt about that but that doesn't mean we have to exclude any tourists that want to come here. And quite frankly, with the state of the Thai Baht being what it is right now we can use all the foreign exchange we can get.

Now as we have noted in other videos, Thailand is not looking to be a haven for international criminals, that's not what we are looking to do and with the new biometric systems Thailand has in place as well as APPS and PBIX as well as the new Immigration protocols, I think we can state with a great degree of certainty that we can forestall a lot of that from coming into Thailand and causing problems here. At the same time though, I don't see why we can't have sort of a stratified tourism sector if you will where there's going to be a high-end premium sector and there may be a kind of a middle sector and it goes from there. Yes, there are going to be budget travellers that come to Thailand. Another thing to bear in mind, backpackers discover Thailand. They get older; they accrue capital; they accrue wealth and they come back. Yes, they start off as being sort of a budget traveller but they will over time, I know many people in Thailand, I am kind of an exception, when I found Thailand I just fell in love and stayed but I know many people who came here between years at university or between university and going to grad school; they came out to Thailand for a month; they travelled on the cheap, they went back home and then years later when they had a job, they had some disposable income they decided to come to Thailand at a much higher level of monetary expense because they are older and they wanted to travel in relatively more comfort. You do things in your 20s that are far less comfortable than you are interested in doing in your late 30s, early 40s, in your 50s. 

So the thing to take away from this video in my opinion is, I certainly agree with the sentiment. Thailand is a premium destination, there's no doubt about that but after two long years of having no tourism, I think our priority should be getting tourism back rather than nitpicking exactly what type of tourism is coming back to Thailand.