Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing, well can Thailand rely on short-term tourists? The reason I got to thinking of making this video, I was reading a recent article in the Pattaya Mail, that is pattyamail.com, the article is titled: Thailand's 10 year Golden Visa outshone by Philippine alternative. I urge those who are watching this video, a lot going on in this article, check it out for yourself, I am going to quote a small excerpt here: Quoting directly: "The Board of Investment has offered little comment to date, although deputy secretary-general Narit Therdsteerasukdi says that Thailand can no longer rely on short-term tourists for much needed income." 

Well my first question is what has the Board of Investment got to do with anything having to do with tourism policy? Board of Investment is a business encouragement vehicle; they are supposed to encourage investment to Thailand. Tourism is what it is. Now I am not saying, he may not necessarily be wrong but I found this to be very odd that BOI has tried moving into the Immigration space and I don't really understand why. They don't really have a mandate to do that. For lack of a better term "stay in your lane and worry about investment here.” 

That being said, I don't necessarily agree with this. I think short term tourism could come back very much so. Now I think we are going to go through a few years here where the world is going to be in kind of a weird situation both geopolitically and economically, but Thailand has been through weird situations geopolitically and economically before and no one was sitting around going, "we should just give up on short-term tourists." No! Why would we do that? Tourism accounted for 20% of the GDP prior to March of 2020. I mean that is a staggering number. It is not what I find a lot of foreigners here in Thailand think it is. A lot of foreigners here in Thailand seem to think that tourism is like half of GDP or something and I always thought that was way out of kilter for what was actually going on, but 20% of GDP is substantial. Meanwhile look there are indications to suggest that short-term tourists, tourism maybe on the rise. I mean two and a half years of not being able to go much of anywhere and do much of anything is going to have an impact. Meanwhile the Dollar is quite strong against the Baht, in fact concerningly so in certain instances, so I think there is room to argue that we could see substantial short-term tourism. Okay, maybe the next year and a half, two years are not going to be the greatest "setting the world on fire" kind of numbers in terms of short term tourists but why would we throw it aside? Meanwhile this whole notion that these long-term folks are just going to come in and fill in the gaps, I just don't see it. Now I do think we should encourage it and anybody that wants to come to Thailand, live long term invest, spend their money here, sure but I just don't understand throwing out the baby with the bathwater here.