According to Thai media news, recently, Mr. Kamoman, a senior analyst at the Economic and Business Research Center (SCB EIC) of Siam Commercial Bank of Thailand, revealed that Thailand welcomed a total of 16.6 million foreign tourists from the beginning of 2024 to June 21, although the number of foreign tourists has slowed down since May, but believes that the overall trend remains good.
He said that when analyzing the tourist data of each country/region, it was found that tourists from all over the country have begun to recover to pre-pandemic levels, and only Chinese tourists are still recovering. According to data from May this year, there were about 500,000 Chinese tourists visiting Thailand, accounting for about 70% of the pre-pandemic level, and the recovery rate is still slower than that of other countries and regions.
Despite this, in the first five months of this year, Chinese tourists have returned to Thailand as the first place in outbound travel, reaching 3.27 million, indicating that Chinese tourists will continue to be the main target group for generating income for Thailand's tourism industry in the future. The SCB EIC believes that the number of foreign tourists will recover to 36.2 million in 2024, and the number of Chinese tourists will be at least 7 million, and it expects Chinese tourists to recover to 2019 levels in 2025.
Camerman further said that visa-free measures between many countries and China have made it easier for Chinese tourists to travel abroad, and Thailand remains the main destination for outbound travel, followed by Japan, South Korea, Vietnam and Singapore. In addition, Chinese's travel behavior can be divided into two categories, namely independent travel and group travel, with the proportion of independent travel increasing to 86% in 2023, and will still be dominated by free travel in 2024.