Any hotel found guilty of hiking up their prices ahead of the “Tiew Pun Sook” campaign will be delisted from the government’s measures to promote domestic tourism, the government said on Monday.
The Thai Hotels Association urged its members on Sunday to refrain from raising prices in order to take advantage of the government’s 40 per cent subsidy. They also admitted that some hotels have already done this.
Pipat Ratchakijprakarn, Minister of Tourism and Sports, said on Monday that it is understandable if there are extra charges for breakfast on participating rooms but if they increase their prices without justifiable reasons, they will be warned.
Hotels that fail to change their prices back to the original rate once the second round of registration begins will be delisted.
Lawan Saengsanit, the spokesman for the Ministry of Finance, said on Monday that hotels should act responsibly if they do not want to be ridiculed by society.
“To help with the recovery of the tourism sector, which accounts for one-fifth of the economy, the government is urging a small group of participating hotels that are using this opportunity to raise their prices to stop this way of doing business,” he said.
“Such practice will only lead to short-term gain and what you might have gained will not be able to counter the long-term loss, both in terms of reputation and business opportunities in the future,” he added.
However, a luxury hotelier in Phuket defended increasing the price as such steps are necessary to ensure that hotels have more revenue.
“The prices from last month were already at a steep discount and just to kick start a revenue stream,” he said. “We need to increase the price to attempt to try and even come close to breaking even.”
“For our customers it is not that much of an increase, just 10-15 per cent.”
Customers can now use online platforms to compare prices and quality which means that they do have a lot more choices, he said.
More than 3.6 million people have already booked with participating hotels under the scheme on July 18, the first day of booking.
The registration for “Tiew Pun Sook” campaign, which has a budget of 22.4 billion baht, began on Wednesday and will last from July through to October.
The campaign includes the “Rao Tiew Duay Gun” package valued at 20 billion baht. Under this package, there will be a 40 per cent discount on flights up to 1,000 baht.
Other deals include a 40 per cent co-payment option for participating hotel rooms with a limit of 3,000 baht per night per room and an e-voucher of 600 baht per person.
The target for the package is for 5 million citizens.
