Domestic Tourism in Thailand. Destinations of Thai and Foreign Tourists.

Tourism Industry in Thailand. Domestic Component

Domestic tourism in Thailand plays an important role. The government makes great efforts to entice Thai people to visit provinces in their own country. This is partly the reason why there are so many public holidays and bridge days (getting monday off when there is a public holiday on tuesday etc.)

Thais made about 249 million in-country trips during 2023 and generated income of no less than 858.9 billion Thai Baht (at average exchange rate of 34.78 Thai Baht for 1 U.S. Dollar, this amounts to about 24.7 billion U.S. Dollar). Average expenditure per person is on the low side (when compared to average daily expenditure of foreigners) at about 3,449 Thai Baht, which suggests these were mostly short weekend trips.

During the same 2023 period, foreign tourists made visits to a total of 66.469 million provinces (about 2.4 provinces per trip). They spent about 1.315 trillion Thai Baht (or 46,713 Thai Baht per person per trip, or about 1,343 U.S. Dollar per person per trip).

Destination of trip for foreigners and domestic tourists are a bit different as shown below.

The vast majority of foreign tourists pass through Bangkok and a lot of them also visit the Southern beach destinations. Very few foreign tourists visit the central, northern and northeastern provinces. Western Thailand (Kanchanaburi ?) receive a good number of foreigners though.

Thai tourists visit everywhere ! This surely includes visits from Bangkok to the provinces by Thai people during the prolonged holiday periods of New Year and Songkran. Many people, working in Bangkok, use the occasion to visit their home provinces.

Viewed this way, the efforts of the Thai government to promote domestic tourism are understood. It makes income available to regions and cities that are not often visited by foreign tourists. The government is also promoting visits to 'secondary destinations' for foreign tourists, we can not judge the results of this promotion at present.