Tourists shop for street food in Bangkok’s Chinatown, Thailand, May 16, 2025. Photo by Reuters
Thailand’s tourism sector has been directly affected and is facing severe volatility, both in terms of travel costs and tourist numbers after one week of Middle East conflicts, according to President of the Tourism Council of Thailand (TCT) Chai Arunanondchai.
The conflicts have had a major impact on airlines, particularly flights from Europe that require transit stops and plane changes in several cities, such as Dubai and Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates and Doha in Qatar, which serve as aviation hubs.
However, services have had to be canceled under airspace closure measures, causing airfares on long-haul routes, especially Europe-bound services, to rise by almost 100%.
If the situation drags on for one month, TCT expects foreign tourist arrivals to decline by no fewer than 300,000 in March alone, particularly from the Middle East and Europe, with nearly 300 billion baht (US$9.33 billion) in lost revenue, said Chai Arunanondchai.
TCT also forecasts that Thailand, the second largest economy in Southeast Asia, will receive 33 million foreign tourists in 2026, close to the 2025 level and short of the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT)’s target of 36.7 million.
To sustain foreign tourist numbers, the strategy must be adjusted to focus more aggressively on promising short-haul markets such as India, Malaysia, Singapore, Japan and Australia, in order to offset the slowdown in Europe and the Middle East, Arunanondchai added.
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