Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing the demography of tourists coming into Thailand at the moment. I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Pattaya Mail, that is pattayamail.com, the article is titled: Pattaya MP will campaign for a 24 hours Party City.

The thrust of that article goes in a very different direction, I am quoting a small excerpt here that I thought was useful. Quoting directly: “Immigration data shows that Thailand has welcomed around 10 million foreign tourists in 2023 so far. But the vast majority have been Indians, Chinese, Malaysians and Russians." I'd say that is probably not too far off.

Now that said, what is interesting and what I would love to know, and to find the data and then to like compile it and collate it so that we could get the answer to this would be rather difficult and I don't even know that the data is out there but what I would be very curious to know is how many Non-immigrant Visa holders as opposed to tourists have come in from the sort of Western countries, whereas Malaysia, China, India, Russia - a lot of those folks seem to come here for limited periods of time and return, whereas getting back over to the West, that is a daunting trip so many of the people that come here, they may come here to do a kind of a form of reconnaissance briefly, stay a couple of weeks, get a feel for Thailand but a lot of the folks that end up coming to Thailand it seems to me, who come from Western Nations, end up coming here to live at least part-time so they end up in Non-immigrant Visa categories and they might not be counted as among tourists.

That is something to keep in mind because the folks that arrive in Non-immigrant Visa status, they are not being lumped in with tourists. The presumption is they effectively live here. So I would be curious to know what the stats are on that and if we do, we will certainly keep you updated on this channel as the situation evolves.