Issue #128 - All Eyes on Thailand for the Lunar New Year Holiday!
Will a busy holiday week set Thailand on track for a near-full recovery in 2024?
Happy Year of the Wood Dragon - and welcome to issue 128 of Asia Travel Re:Set.
This is Thailand’s BIG week.
After signing a bilateral *visa waiver with China and revisiting various laws relating to consumer activities, Lunar New Year is here. South East Asia’s most visited nation expects to cash-in for the showpiece travel mini-season of the first half of the calendar.
After an impressive January for visitor arrivals, LNY will set a benchmark for the year ahead in Thailand and across South East Asia.
So let’s follow that train of thought…
Thanks for checking-in.
- “IN THE NEWS”
- All Eyes on Thailand for the Lunar New Year Holiday!
Will a busy holiday week set Thailand on track for a near-full recovery in 2024?
- Will Taylornomics Encourage OTAs & SuperApps to Sell Concert Tickets?
Talking all things Music Tourism with Martin Haigh of Total Ticketing.
“IN THE NEWS”
China’s outbound recovery in 2023 was slow but there was plenty to learn. Meanwhile, domestic travel trends in China created a rich tapestry of talking points. Many thanks to Vincent Vichit-Vadakan for capturing the key points of my presentation at the ASEAN Tourism Forum in Vientiane in this article for Travel Weekly Asia.
“Domestic consumption on tourism is very important in China. We will continue to see a push in China to improve and expand domestic tourism. That’s priority number one.” Many thanks to Joyce Huang for using some of my comments on visa waivers and Chinese domestic tourism in this article/video segment for VOA Mandarin.
All Eyes on Thailand for the Lunar New Year Holiday!
Thailand is embarking on its most highly anticipated year for tourism arrivals since 2019 - when it attracted a fraction short of 40 million visitors. The official target for 2024 is 35-40 million foreign arrivals and 200-220 million domestic trips.
The vital statistic, though, is a forecast for combined revenue from inbound and domestic travel of THB3.5 trillion.
Set aside the grandiose talk about sustainability, tourism in South East Asia is pure economics.
Structural Headwinds & Chinese Tourists
In Thailand, tourism is viewed by the government as a primary tool for bolstering a low-growth national economy. The Thai economy slowed “more than expected in late 2023…. [and] is projected to slow in 2024,” says the Bank of Thailand. “Structural headwinds are restraining merchandise exports and tourism more than expected.”
Consequently, this week the BoT held the policy interest rate at 2.50%.
China - which is Thailand’s largest trade partner and by some margin its biggest inbound tourist market pre-Covid - is central to the government’s objective of attracting more tourists and more spending.
“Thailand always welcomes Chinese visitors and will ensure their safety while they are staying here,” said Thai Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin in a Lunar New Year address. “Thais and Chinese are no strangers, but essentially siblings,” he added.
This week, Thailand expects the most lucrative Spring Festival holiday for half-a-decade while looking nervously over its shoulder at events in 2023.
The ‘safety’ aspect referenced in the PM’s speech echoes concerns raised after a Chinese citizen was shot and killed at Siam Paragon mall during the October 2023 Golden Week. It also recalls widespread social media fears about the scams, kidnaps and personal safety issues featured in two Chinese movies set in South East Asia.
China v India v Russia: Not Even a Contest!
Barring a major shock event, China will restore its status as Thailand’s top visitor market in 2024. The official target is 8 million Chinese visitors in 2024, still some way short of 2019’s 11 million - but more than double the 3.5 million arrivals in 2023.
More Chinese visitors would help Thailand improve upon the 28.2 million arrivals it received in 2023 - although that represented a big leap from 11.1 million in 2022.
The top 5 visitor source markets last year were Malaysia (4.56 million), China (3.51 million), South Korea (1.65 million), India (1.62 million) and Russia (1.48 million).
North East Asia/South East Asia contributed 62% of visitors to Thailand in 2023, down from 69% in 2019. That gap is largely attributed to a slow Chinese recovery.
China remains the benchmark - especially as the heavily hyped markets of Russia (stagnant growth vs 2019) and India (fewer visitors vs 2019) failed to step up in 2023.
Visa Waiver: Judge its Impact Over the Long Term
And finally… there has been (and will continue to be) much media hype about the catalytic effect of the Thailand-China visa waiver. I’ll dive into this in the coming weeks, but I noted this comment from Benjamin Zawacki, author of Thailand: Shifting Ground Between the U.S. and Rising China, in this article in The Diplomat.
“I don’t think the middle class [in China] has the means that it had pre-COVID to come to Thailand in such numbers… So, Thailand can do all it wants to try to pull, but if there’s not a push on the opposite end of that, then it can only do so much.”
This is an interesting point - and the LNY holiday will create a spike-then-dip in Chinese arrivals. It always does.
Extrapolating the gains made this week over the next 10 months is the big challenge.
[*NB: For newer readers, Issue #118 - Thailand Triggers Asia Pacific's Scramble for Chinese Tourists! provides some useful context]
Will Taylornomics Encourage OTAs & SuperApps to Sell Concert Tickets?
As Taylor Swift kicked off her Asia tour in Tokyo (Melbourne, Sydney and Singapore await), music tourism is a hot topic. Singapore, Tokyo, Seoul, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Macau, KL and Jakarta are competing to attract Asian and global pop megastars.
On The South East Asia Travel Show, we are joined by events ticketing expert Martin Haigh to discuss the mechanics of concert tourism. Could Concert Tickets & Events Travel Packages become a new category on OTA and SuperApp platforms? Might payment brands become pop ticket distributors? Does the events ticketing model need to change? And, what are the potential scenarios for the travel industry?
Listen to 'Will Taylornomics Encourage OTAs & SuperApps to Sell Concert Tickets in Asia?' here:
🎧 Spotify 🎧 Apple Podcasts 🎧 Website
Or search for The South East Asia Travel Show on any podcast platform
And, that’s a wrap for Issue 128.
The Asia Travel Re:Set newsletter will return on 18 February.
Until then, find me at LinkedIn, The South East Asia Travel Show and re:set strategies.
Happy travels,
Gary