Destinations known | Planning a trip to Thailand in 2023? Why you should think twice
- A respected travel publisher has included Thailand on its annual ‘No List’ of destinations to reconsider visiting in 2023
- Including the country in its ‘overcrowded hotspot’ group, the publisher highlights Thailand’s environmental recovery during the pandemic
Talk about mixed messages!
No sooner has tourism in Thailand entered the recovery stage, with the government trumpeting the restorative powers of the industry after two long years of Covid-enforced inactivity, than along comes a respected travel publisher telling us not to visit the Southeast Asian nation in 2023, or to at least think long and hard about doing so.
“A revival in tourism helped [the Thai economy] expand at the fastest pace in more than a year last quarter,” reported the Bloomberg newswire last week.
With a weak baht adding to the appeal of the country to foreign visitors, “at least 1.5 million visitors a month are expected during the remainder of the year”, adding to the 7.56 million who had already arrived in 2022 by the end of October.
As in other tourist magnets across the country, Pattaya, a resort city 100km (62 miles) southeast of Bangkok, is certainly seeing the return of tourists as a positive.
Thanet Supornsahasrangsi, president of the Tourism Council of Chonburi, told the Bangkok Post recently that Pattaya is looking forward to a 60 to 70 per cent room occupancy rate this New Year, compared with 30 to 40 per cent at the height of the pandemic.