Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing the prospect of 5 million tourists in Thailand in 2021. This is an informational piece but it is kind of an opinion piece as well. We did a video some time back and truly, when I think about these numbers it just boggles my mind where we said that I believe it was the Tourism Council of Thailand had noted that it looked like 2 to 3 million people had been displaced from their jobs either layoffs, outright firing or they were small business holders or even sole proprietors that just saw their businesses just dry up in the aftermath of the response to COVID and the lack of tourists associated therewith. Bear in mind, based on the numbers that I have read, in 2019 Thailand saw right at almost 40 million tourists come to Thailand and here we are, 2020 was obviously abysmal, but it wasn't terrible in the sense that the first quarter, the end of that high season was pretty normal. It wasn't until really March that we saw a lot of restrictions starting to get kicked in, starting to come into play. 2021 did not start with the end or the tail end of a real "High season" and for that reason we are not looking ahead at numbers at least for this calendar year, looking all that great. 

In a recent article from Thai Visa, and they are noting a picture from Thai Rath, this is on Thai Visa, thaivisa.com, the article is titled: Russians and Indian High Spenders in the Plans as Thai Tourism Minister HALVES 2021 Assessment. Quoting directly: "Thailand's Minister of Tourism and Sports, Pipat Ratchakitprakarn said that he expects that no less than 5 million foreign tourists to visit the country this year." This is half previous assessments from the TAT in recent weeks. Their Chief, Yutthasak Suphasorn suggested 10 million would come.”

So understand Tourism Authority of Thailand is a different thing from the Ministry of Tourism although they have a lot of overlap with respect to their bailiwicks but the thing to take away from this video is no matter how you cut it, even 10 million is still a quarter of what Thailand saw in 2019. 5 million is down around a little over 10%. I am not laughing. I am staggered by just how low these tourism numbers are. So hopefully, I did another video sort of saying it is always darkest before the dawn, hopefully we are being too pessimistic; we are getting a little bit too much normalcy bias in thinking it is just going to continue in the doldrums, and it may not. As quickly as this thing was brought on, it could be turned off and we could see things resume. That being said, it remains to be seen and we will certainly keep you updated on this channel as the situation progresses.