Thursday, April 29, 2004
Thailand's reputation as safe tourist destination threatened
Agence France-Presse Bangkok, April 29
Thailand's reputation as a safe tourist destination could be jeopardised by violence in the kingdom's south which claimed 112 lives in bloody scenes beamed worldwide, experts warned on Thursday.
Britain and Denmark reacted to the clashes between security forces and separatists with warnings advising citizens not to travel to the region and the United States also expressed its concern over the violence.
The unrest is the latest body blow for the industry which has struggled to overcome the effects of regional outbreaks of the SARS virus, and bird flu which killed eight people here.
The Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) said arrival numbers would be affected if the troubles continued in the south, which has been the scene of an upsurge of unrest since the start of the year.
"It will be affected if the unrest is not over soon," said Napasorn Kakai, a TAT official in the resort island of Phuket, one of Thailand's premier tourism destinations.
"We are concerned that if the unrest continues it will finally affect Phuket and Krabi," he told AFP, adding the strife threatened to trigger cancellations at hotels and resort.
Napasorn said that while Phuket and the other popular islands of Samui and Krabi were several hundred kilometres (miles) from the crisis-hit provinces bordering Malaysia, they were all technically "in the south".
The potential for confusion, and erroneous press reports that Phuket had been affected by separatist violence this year, was already causing problems, he said.
Violence in the south has already seen Malysian tourist numbers fall by up to 30 percent according to TAT figures, which show Malaysians account for 10 percent of the almost 10 million tourists who visit Thailand each year.
"There is bound to be a decline in tourism, especially from Malaysia, which generates roughly 10 percent of Thailand's total visitor arrivals, most of it cross-border," said Bangkok-based travel editor Imtiaz Muqbil.
"That has already happened in the first quarter of this year," he said.
Tourism officials in the deep south, which hosts the majority of the Malaysian market, saying the industry there would be completely devastated by the latest attacks.
"Who will come to those three provinces after this incident has happened," said Uthai Varaonasukul, TAT assistant director for the region, adding that tourists had only just begun to return after earlier troubles this year.
"We can not talk about tourism in the south for a while as long as the unrest is still going on," he said, adding hotel cancellations were as high as 100 percent in some areas.
"People here live with fear, particularly Thai Buddhists no one really wants to leave their home if they don't have to," he said.
Tourism officials have been anxiously monitoring the south since January when an attack on an army base marked the beginning of a fresh wave of violence in the region plagued by sporadic separatist struggles for decades.
But commentators said they were hopeful that the industry, backed by Thailand's reputation as a democracy with a stable government, would cope with the latest shock.
Arrivals dropped 3.3 percent in 2003 to 9.7 million due to the regional outbreak of SARS -- the atypical pneumonia known as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome which caused panic around the region and claimed nearly 800 lives.
The government predicted in January that with the SARS crisis behind it, tourist arrivals would bounce back in 2004 to a record high of 12 million.
© Hindustan Times Ltd. 2004.