Sometimes when a government or organization speaks about certain things you kind of wonder what the hell they are talking about. Sometimes these statements reach such an obvious conclusion that it makes you wonder if this is a legitimate press release or if they are having some fun with us by trolling. Recently a high-ranking official made such an announcement and immediately faced lol's from the world.
Don Nakornthab, senior director of the economic and policy department and someone who is almost certainly not actually named "Don," made an announcement basically stating that closed borders from Covid fears could be extremely detrimental to the tourism industry.
Don went on to say much more than just that but I think that if we were to ask a group of 3rd graders whether or not they think not letting anyone into the country would result in more or less visitors that almost all of them could come up with the correct answer. I understand that these people have a job and they need to make announcements every now and then but I find the fact that this was "news" at all to be kind of funny.
So here are some stats that are really scary for people involved in the Thai tourism industry (and I know quite a few.)
- In 2019, Thailand hosted over 40 million foreign tourist visitors
- As of September, 2020, Thailand has undergone 4 months of zero foreign tourists
- Tourism, in 2020 was 20% of Thailand's overall Gross Domestic Product (GDP) which is a measure of all the money that a country makes.
- more than 6 million Thais are employed in the tourism industry
While not as dependent as other countries such as island nations in the Caribbean such as Antigua & Barbuda whose GDP is over 90% reliant on tourism, Thailand is no slouch at 20%. Imagine if you will that 20% of your income was just, poof!, gone overnight. You would probably need to tighten the purse-strings a bit. If you are one of those people whose budget is completely spent at the beginning of every month due to poor financial planning, you would be F**Ked.
Now imagine that you spent all of your educational years pursuing what was for many years a very reliable industry. The tourism degree programs at Thai universities are very popular career paths. I would argue it is one of the most popular. Now we have not just the existing work force that is out of work but also a large group of soon to be members in that industry that are preparing for a job that at least for now, doesn't exist. Almost every Thai person I know in some capacity or another works for an industry geared towards tourism, but I realize that this is because I tend to hang out with people who speak English and everyone in the tourism industry speaks English.
I suppose that the Director of Economic and Policy department was just doing his job, or perhaps once again drawing attention to the fact that a lot of people are going to be suffering (and already are) by the lack of international tourism and in that regard I commend him. I just find it a bit amusing that this would hit the headlines because it is so obvious. It would be like if the head of auto manufacturing were to warn about how not producing any automobiles is going to result in a dramatic drop off in auto sales or closing your minimart is going to result in a massive downturn in candy sales at said location.
What will Thailand do to rectify this? They claim to be working on domestic tourism but at the same time they seem to ignore the fact that in the absence of salaries for many shops and jobs that have been totally shut down for months, people don't have any money and when people don't have any money one of the first extravagances that gets shut down would be the travel and tourism part of the budget.