Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Western Tourists here in Thailand. This is kind of one of those videos, every now and then I make one of these and kind of think to myself yeah you know Westerners here in Thailand, Western Tourists, we kind of think we make up more of the pie if you will than we sometimes do as a matter of course. 

The reason for the video, I was reading a recent article in the Pattaya Mail, that is pattayamail.com, the article is titled: Pattaya Grapevine: The gay disease? and this was under the sub-headline, More five stars. Quoting directly: "In case you wondered what is happening next to Hard Rock Hotel, near Central Festival, the site will be a 100 billion Baht project for a JW Marriott luxury skyscraper hotel. The only thing that can stop Pattaya's transformation from rags to riches is when the space runs out. The assumption being made is that tourism in Pattaya will thrive in the next 10 years with Asian visitors. Americans, Europeans and Aussies are no longer the center of attention." Yeah, that's probably true I would say that yeah there is kind of a banking on the Chinese market, Korea Japan, down here in Southeast Asia as well, Singapore, picking up picking up tourists into Thailand from those jurisdictions. Do I necessarily think that the Western tourists are being pushed out? No, not by a long shot. In fact if anything, I think they are just as welcome as they ever have been, if not more so.  But demographics are demographics and the fact is especially out of China the numbers especially back when before COVID and all this stuff, the numbers were staggering, the numbers of Chinese that will come to Thailand compared to Western tourism and that had an impact. I mean it really fundamentally changed the focus of Tourism providers here in Thailand. 

Now that said in the near term I definitely think Western tourists are going to be the main attraction at least for the next year or two at a minimum because I just simply think that the travel restrictions in those countries are far less onerous compared to say China right now and I don't see that changing any time particularly soon. Now that said, back to kind of the point I made at the beginning of this video there is that kind of this tendency of westerners, I do it myself to overestimate, because it's our perspective. I mean I constantly have to remind myself that Americans are like by numbers in terms of the demography like the lowest set of Westerners here. I mean the British and the Scandinavians and many Europeans, Australians especially, New Zealand even, I mean there are far more folks of those nationalities in Thailand than there are Americans. It's just a fact; I mean it is just demography, there are just not that many Americans that come here compared to say Australians so you kind of can get a tendency to be biased toward sort of the in-group you are from for lack of a better term. Yeah, do I think that Westerners over time are going to decrease as far as their piece of the overall Tourism Pie if you will? But he's going to happen yeah that is probably going to happen. But is it going to happen overnight? No, and I think actually the next couple of years you are going to see the mainstay being a lot of Western Tourists and then yeah probably Asian Tourists will kind of take back up that slack as time moves on.