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Thai
tourism: Spend it like Beckham
By Tony Allison
HUA HIN, Thailand - The beach has all the requisite attractions of a tropical
paradise - blindingly white sands curving off to a distant headland, benign,
azure sea, and of course palm trees. Picture-perfect stuff, which is why
tourists love to take pictures of it.
When there are tourists, that is.
A stroll the length of Hua Hin's four-kilometer main beach is a very lonely
pursuit these days, a million miles from the millions fighting for air in the
capital Bangkok, a few hours' drive north up the Gulf of Thailand.
It wasn't always like this, of course. The trademark horses on Hua Hin's main
beach (all males, by the way, so that they don't get too frisky) hardly had
time to draw breath before the next rider hopped - well, more likely was
unceremoniously bundled - on to the saddle. Pretty good business for the
handful or so owners in their somewhat incongruous cowboy hats.
Good business, too, were the deck chairs lined up in ranks on the edge of the
beach, presided over by a few tough-talking matrons not adverse to "helping"
unwary tourists seat themselves. Once reclined, the meter started running, from
the cost of the chair itself to the pleasures of the food and drink readily
supplied.
There were few complaints, though, as this was as close as it got to paradise
for the mainly European tourists who found their way to Hua Hin, and their
euros went a long way.
But now the horses stand idle, and the matrons spend the day exchanging loud
banter with equally bored trinket sellers who used to be much more happily
engaged in haggling over the price of their ornate, but worthless, shell
decorations.
First the war in Iraq, then the severe acute respiratory syndrome scare, have
hit Hua Hin's tourist sector hard - and that of the rest of Thailand, and the
region, for that matter.
The state-run Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) estimates - very
optimistically, one might say - that the total number of tourist arrivals in
2003 will drop by just over 10 percent to 9 million, compared with 10.8 million
last year. Similarly, revenue from foreign visitors - one of the country's
largest foreign-exchange earners - is also expected to drop by 10 percent from
2002 levels to 289 billion baht (US$7 billion). The most recent figures
available indicate that just under a million foreign tourists visited Hua Hin
in 2001.
A decline in the number of foreign tourists in Thailand would be the first in
many years. On the brighter side, the TAT predicts that the number of tourist
arrivals in 2004 will rise above 11 million, while income will increase to 340
billion baht. In pre-crisis days, though, these had been the projected figures
for 2003, so the losses in effect are greater than would appear at first
glance.
The TAT has been given a substantial war chest to woo back skittish tourists.
From April to mid-June, it and other private agencies are estimated to have
spent about 175 million baht in stimulating interest in domestic and
international markets. And the national flag carrier, Thai Airways
International, is giving away 20,000 free tickets over the next few weeks to
travelers, guaranteed to bring a smile to the lucky winners.
Which is more-or-less appropriate for Thailand, widely know as the Land of
Smiles. Or it used to be. The recently created Culture Ministry has launched a
campaign to encourage Thais to smile even more. "Smiling is a good habit as
well as a good welcome gesture to tourists," a ministry spokeswoman was quoted
as saying in the Bangkok Post. "People who smile three times a day should make
it six. This doesn't mean smiling has disappeared, but it would be better if
people smiled more," she said.
Trying hard to smile more are Hua Hin's haggard hoteliers, whose upper echelon
includes Hyatt, Hilton, Sofitel, Marriott, Chiva-Som, Dusit, Evason and
Anantara, and whose occupancy rates have taken a beating from the 60-65 percent
pre-gloom days. At the lower end, too, scores of lesser establishments echo
with the ghosts of tourists past.
The hotel industry, like the TAT, has not been idle, and initiatives such as an
international jazz festival held in late June have helped fill rooms and give
some welcome exposure to Hua Hin - the country's oldest beach resort, made
popular by Thailand's monarchy and still home to the king's summer palace.
Golf, in line with the TAT's initiative to find niche markets for the tourist
industry, including spas and adventure, shopping and eco-tourism, is being
heavily promoted in Hua Hin. Apart from the country's first championship
course, the Royal Hua Hin Golf Course, build in the 1920s in the hills right
behind the town's quaint railway station, the undulating countryside around the
resort is positively littered with international-standard layouts.
It's still low season in Thailand, so it is too early to tell how strong the
rebound in the tourist sector will be. The TAT, obviously, is confident that
people will return to what is without a doubt the region's most resilient
destination. The good folks at the TAT could do Hua Hin a big favor, though, by
including it on the map of Thailand that appears on the main page of their
website.
Just like David Beckham briefly put Hua Hin on the map last month. Jet-setter
Beckham, whose other distraction is playing soccer, recently for Manchester
United and now of Real Madrid, and his once Spice Girl singer wife, Victoria,
dropped in unexpectedly on Hua Hin's first international-standard health spa,
Chiva-Som, for a couple of days, promptly setting off a mini-paparazzi frenzy.
There's been no official word on how much the couple enjoyed their brief stay.
Or whether they even took any pictures. But mere mortals in search of a
vacation could do worse than follow in the superstar's footsteps: spend it like
Beckham.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact
content@atimes.com for information on our sales and syndication
policies.)
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