Chinese groups retreat

The Chinese government has issued an order telling citizens to cancel trips to Thailand until 23 March at the earliest, based on red shirt protests in Bangkok, according to Association of Thai Travel Agents honorary committee, Sisdivachr Cheewarattanaporn.

He said: ?The government also asked tourists that are in Thailand to return as quickly as possible.?

He said the announcement came after local media reported a M79 grenade had landed in the compound of a military camp injuring two soldiers.

?This is too much for Chinese tourists,? said Mr Sisdivachr. ?It represents unacceptable behaviour from their standpoint.?

He estimates the loss from the Chinese market will exceed Bt100 million.

Also if the unrest continues, the Chinese government will ensure that tour groups divert long-term to other destinations such as Japan, Korea or Australia, he said, noting that Taiwan would benefit the most.

As for Songkran bookings, in April, he said over 100 Chinese charter flights are expected to come to Thailand, but there is a big question mark over bookings if the protests continue into next week.

?Once again Thai tour operators, who work in the Chinese market are crying,? said Mr Sisdivachr. ?There is a deep sense of frustration in the market.?

Like other industry sources, he believes that as long as the demonstrations are peaceful and the government is careful in its responses the impact will be short, possibly causing travel bookings to drop in April, but then recovering in May.

However, an escalation in the protests will eventually set in motion massive, long-term cancellations in Asian markets.

Chao Phraya Hotel general manager, Andrew Wood points out that the Asian market books mainly three and four-star hotels.

?This hotel segment represents the bulk of the rooms in Bangkok and they suffer the most when there is unrest in the capital.?

But he is still confident long-term. ?If the protests are contained and end shortly, then we can all look forward to a year that will close with an improvement, not a vintage year but better than 2009.?

Meanwhile, the city?s five-star hotels are losing corporate meetings fast and that is a space dominated by new entrants, all managed by international chains and keen to make an impact.

There are reliable indicators that major regional corporations are moving meetings to Kuala Lumpur. Corporate security assessments, hired by US companies, are already instructing staff that Bangkok is off-limits for business travel.

One US corporation will move a 600-person meeting to Kuala Lumpur that was due to be held in Bangkok?s Ploenchit district end of the month.

An executive at the corporation?s regional office in Singapore explained that this was the second time a major sales-related event was forced to relocate out of Thailand to Kuala Lumpur in less than two years.

?Frankly we are disappointed as Bangkok is a popular destination for corporate meetings and we are even more disappointed that our confidence in bringing the meeting back to Bangkok was again misplaced. It will take us a long time to reconsider. It puts the success of a corporate event at risk and it is too time consuming to factor in contingency plans whenever a Bangkok option is on the table. ?

Sourced = The TTR Weekly