Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing the drop in tourism in 2020. I have had a lot of emails, I have had a lot of folks actually ask me in person, friends of mine, asked me what my guess is on how much tourism dropped in 2020. I have had my speculations; somewhere between 70, 80 maybe even 90% but I have always been rather hesitant to make such speculations as people then come back to me and say "well you were wrong about this". Yes I was guessing, educated guess as best I can. I do this study this quite frequently but I am not the final authority on the numbers. 

A recent article though, kind of unrelated or tangentially related to this topic from Thai Visa, thaivisa.com, the article was titled: Vaccine Passports Could Allow Foreigners to Visit Thailand Without Quarantine. Quoting directly: "Thailand which normally welcomes around 40 million tourists saw tourist arrivals fall by 90% in 2020." I thought that was rather interesting; 90%. So if normally 40 million, I guess that means there were only 4 million tourists in 2020. That is a number, based on what we are seeing, that I would probably believe. 4 million, 5 million tourists and that is just a substantial reduction, especially for a country that a large part of the economy depends on tourism, to lose 90% of that part of the economy is really pretty staggering and truly my thoughts go out to folks. I see the resorts here in Thailand or I have seen in the last few months all but abandoned, Bangkok is certainly far quieter than it usually is. It is just an unfortunate sad state of affairs and truly the folks that have been put out of work as a result of this it is just a terrible thing. There is really no other word for it. 

Hopefully we will see developments in coming months. The response to COVID, perhaps the repeal of the Emergency Decree and the return to some degree of normality with respect to especially the tourism sector would be welcome from many including myself here in the Kingdom of Thailand.