Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are talking about "Is Thailand trying to kill the "Golden Goose"?" I do occasionally do what I call an op-ed article or an op-ed video I guess I should say and this is one of those. It is sort of an op-ed.

In a recent article from the Bangkok Post, that is bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: 300 Baht Fee for Foreigners Visiting Thailand. Quoting directly: National Tourism Policy Committee has approved the proposed guidelines for the collection of a 300 Baht tourism fee from each international visitor. The money will be used for the management of local tourist destinations and to provide insurance benefits. Tourism and Sports Minister Phiphat Ratchakitprakarn said each foreign visitor will be charged US $10 (300 Baht) per visit. The details of the fee collection will be announced in The Royal Gazette once the policy has taken effect."  There is more in here. Again, this is Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com.  

Notably, this apparently is not yet promulgated policy. It apparently has not yet at least as of the time of this video to the best of my knowledge, been published in The Royal Gazette. Secondly, back to the point of this video, I actually got this in an email from a client as well as a viewer of this channel and those are two separate people. Two different people sent me this. One of them actually asked me in their email, "Are they trying to kill the "Golden Goose"? which is the “Golden Goose” of tourism. I have to admit the optics for lack of a better term, and the timing of this proposal really doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Now there is not a great deal of Tourism coming into Thailand here in January, the first quarter of 2021, but just across the board if you were trying to sort of gin up tourism or looking to gin up tourism throughout 2021, this really isn't a policy you particularly want out there in the press as being something that they promulgated in the doldrums of the COVID-19 situation here in Thailand. Now long story short, I think they will probably get this through if they really want to. It isn't a huge amount of money I certainly get that but the question is valid and the question was posed again by two different people although not in the same words, "What is the thinking going on with this?" Personally I don't think that this is organized policy discussion to really get as much money as they can out of the tourists or something. I don't think that is what is going. In point of fact, I think at a policy level there is so much going on that I think, I hesitate to say that they are overwhelmed, but it is like triage in the medical profession. They are prioritizing the biggest issues first and certain things are not getting maybe the attention they otherwise would and so things like this are either being promulgated almost automatically or they are being promulgated maybe based on a schedule of things that was set to be dealt with some time ago and folks never really got around to changing that protocol under the current circumstances. I don't exactly know but I will say yeah it doesn't look great and tourism is definitely necessary for Thailand. It is not the only aspect of their GDP. It is not like Thailand is a Caribbean nation that relies almost in its entirety GDP wise on tourism. That is really not the case with Thailand but it is a big chunk of GDP and depending on what you read, 10% 12% I have read as high as 20% of GDP, comes directly or indirectly from foreign tourism.

So to be discussing policies like this at this time again it is not the best optics and it is not the best timing but as the situation progresses we will discuss it as the situation evolves.