Originally Posted by
Seekingasylum
The problem, Butters, is that the opposite is true. Twenty years ago the revenue from US/European/Nip travellers accounted for a significant share of the foreign tourism pie contributing to GDP but those days are long gone and the ASEAN/domestic tourists with the Chinese, Indian and Russian demographic have eclipsed those earlier trends - one of the reasons why Thailand is no longer the attractive place it once was when Bangkok et al was a fascinating kaleidoscope of fun, chaos, happenstance and unpredictable but usually serendipitous events.
Pattaya is perhaps the best illustration of the phenomenon. 20-25 years ago the foreign demographic was predominantly EU, American, Australian contributing a majority to a visiting population of around 3 millions. The last pre-covid figures for Pattaya 2019 was 9.3 millions, 35% were Thai but by far the greater proportion of foreign tourists were Chinese, ASEAN ( huge number of Koreans ), with equal numbers of Russians, Indians and Germans each sending around 400,000. The remainder of EU countries are statistically insignificant.