More than 1.7 million people registered online for the government’s domestic tourism on Wednesday, according to the Ministry of Finance, but unless the government continues to bail out the industry, businesses say they will continue to flirt with bankruptcy.
The registration for “Tiew Pun Sook” campaign, with a budget of 22.4 billion baht, began on Wednesday and will run through July and October. The campaign include the “Rao Tiew Duay Gun” package which introduces a 40 per cent refund for air ticket up to 1,000 baht. Other deals include a 40 per cent co-payment for participating hotel rooms with a limit of 3,000 baht per night per room and an e-voucher of 600 baht per person.
But despite the massive amount of people registering for the program, businesses say they will still need government aid if they are to survive the effects of the coronavirus pandemic.
Supawan Tanomkieatipume, the President of the Thai Hotels Association, said at a CARE Group meeting this past weekend that hotels will still struggle even with the government programs.
Supawan said the government’s latest measures to stimulate domestic tourism will increase occupancy rates but only temporarily because it is not real organic demand.
According to the Thai Hotels Association, 90 per cent of hotels in the last three months have had to furlough staff and shut their doors as they waited out the coronavirus pandemic. With international travel unlikely to be a viable factor in the coming months, the businesses will look to the government for aid and bail out packages.
The Tourism Authority of Thailand is predicting a fall of 80% in international arrivals to just 8.2 million visitors this year including the 6.7 million arrivals before flights were shut in late March.
This cuts the direct revenue linked to tourists to just Baht 396 billion from more than 3 trillion baht seen in 2019.
The government has planned to offer subsidies of 22.4 billion baht in the hope that it may lead to 50 billion baht in spending by residents in the second half this year.
But for an industry will annual revenues hovering in the trillions, this will not be enough to cover costs and keep the lights on.
