Thick smog leaves Chiang Mai’s Songkran Thai New Year celebrations a damp squib
- For more than a month, the northern Thai city and its neighbouring provinces have been shrouded in smog
- Hotel occupancy rates have suffered, with tourists cancelling bookings and changing their travel plans to holiday further south
Swankiri is a brand-new secluded mountain resort just 30 minutes from downtown Chiang Mai, the largest city in northern Thailand. It opened last November and all of its 16 rooms were fully booked for the first few months of operations. But this month, it will welcome no visitors at all.
“There have been cancellations,” said Rut, one of the hotel’s managers. “But maybe [it’s also] because we are new and have not promoted the place that much.”
For more than a month, Chiang Mai and its neighbouring provinces along the borders with Myanmar and Laos have been shrouded in heavy smog caused by man-made forest fires. As of Sunday, Chiang Mai’s air quality measured 174 on the air quality index, indicating “unhealthy”, compared to 56 in Bangkok. The pollution has put many off visiting what many see as one of Thailand’s most beautiful tourist destinations.
The scale of the northern smog crisis has also affected traditional Thai New Year celebrations, known as Songkran, which run until Tuesday. In the northern part of the country, the festival is usually extended into a week-long event filled with religious rites and international crowds who come for the notorious water fights.
But in Chiang Mai this year, tourists do not seem to want to stay too long. Panlop Saejew, vice-president of the city’s chamber of commerce, said the overall hotel occupancy rate in Chiang Mai during Songkran this year was “below expectations”.