Visitor numbers down in Oct as Chinese stay away

Nonetheless, Chinese remained the largest and highest-spending group of foreign arrivals.

Tourism Ministry Permanent Secretary Pongpanu Svetarundra said on Wednesday (Nov 21) that of the 2.71mn visitors, 1.85mn (68%) came from East Asia. Smaller numbers came from Europe, South Asia, North America, Oceania, the Middle East and Africa.

He attributed the drop in total arrivals to the fall off in Chinese tourists. (See report here.)

Last month, about 646,000 Chinese travellers came to Thailand, a drop of 19.8% year-on-year. They spent B34.6 billion, down by 16.5% on the same month in 2017.

Chinese nationals remained the largest group of visitors last month, followed by those from Malaysia, Laos, South Korea, Japan, India, Russia, the United States, Cambodia and Singapore.

Overall tourism income amounted to B141bn, up 0.66%. The biggest spenders came from China, followed by Malaysia, Russia, the United States, Japan, South Korea, Britain, Australia, Laos and India.

Full year-to-date figures, however, increased over the same period last year. From January to October 9.2mn Chinese tourists visited the country and spent B495bn. The total number of visitors during the period was 31.25 million visitors, up by 7.84%. Total spending by visitors hit B1.63 trillion, up 9.98% over January-October 2017.

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