Chinese visitors turn away from Thailand after tourist boat disaster
Phuket and other popular Thai destinations are experiencing a decline in arrivals from their biggest tourism market
A boat accident near Thailand’s Phuket Island that killed 47 Chinese last month is significantly cutting arrival numbers from China, though the Thai tourism industry is hopeful the decline will be stemmed by late this year.
The July 5 capsizing of the Phoenix was Thailand’s worst tourist-related disaster in years. China is Thailand’s biggest source of visitors, and last year accounted for nearly one-third of the record 35.38 million arrivals.
During July, Chinese arrivals fell 0.9 per cent from a year earlier, the first drop since the start of 2017, when the Thai government was cracking down on cheap tour packages from China.
The Thai tourism ministry expects a bigger decline of 14.3 per cent for August.
And the ministry cut its target for Chinese arrivals in July-December by 669,000, or 11.5 per cent, to 5.15 million.
