Thailand attempts to lure Indians in for tourism then complains when they get here

Thailand is a funny place when it comes to their tourism. Their country's livelihood kind of depends on it since it is 20% of their overall GDP. They are right up there with Iceland as far as how much tourism makes up their country's overall earnings.

Lately, especially in the past year. Thailand is finally starting to admit (not publicly) that they screwed up somewhere with their dominant position as number one for tourism in Asia (as well as very high in the world rankings) as they have for the first time since people started recording these things, Thailand is NOT number one in SE Asia anymore.

To attempt to compensate for this, they have been attempting to lure in other nationalities since I think they have kind of thrown in the towel on trying to get the cash-cow that is Chinese tourism back. What can I say? You abuse the living hell out of a nationality for 20 years and then they decide to go elsewhere as a group. Imagine that?

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Thailand is exploring an initiative to cater to India, and the billons of people that live there to come on over to Thailand and have some fun and spend some of your money on a wonderful holiday over here!

This is a double edged sword though, and I have seen the aftermath of it many times. There is nothing particularly awful about Indians and I would never outright say that an entire nationality is bad, but the fact remains that people from India are kind of not all that wanted here, to put it bluntly.

I recall when a friend of mine had a tour agency and he had this book of all the hotels and the rates and commissions that they would charge to agents and they were allowed to resell at any price they wanted to some degree. However, there were little markers that would happen during certain time-periods or even hotels year round that said "NI" next to the name of the hotel and their contact information and this meant "No Indians."

it was well-known that this meant that and nobody really even tried to hide that this was their policy. Thailand isn't the United States and if a place wants to be racist (or anti-any-nationality) they are free to do so. Nobody is going to win a discrimination lawsuit here.

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You don't have to search very hard to find stories about Indians behaving badly in hotspot areas like Phuket, Bangkok, and Pattaya (especially Pattaya) but the thing is these places are where the entire world goes to misbehave, it's not just the people from India.

There are also widespread reports of how people from India will do something like book a double room with two beds and then 10 people stay in it and the party will demand towels and toiletries for the mass of people staying in the room against the rules. A friend of mine that owned some villas would tell me stories about how 2 or 3 people would check in to the villa and the staff would report that there was a minivan around the corner with 4-6 other people in it, waiting for the original members to check in so the rest of them could sneak onto the property.

I'm not saying this is widespread, I am saying that this is what the rumor among Thais is, and that, when that happens, it may as well be as stone-cold fact.

2020-2022 can be attributed to Covid nonsense but overall the trend is upward as far as tourist from India are concerned.

I think that we have to look at this situation as one of "beggars can't be choosers" and Thailand is starting to be in a rather desperate situation here when they are "playing nice" with a nationality that historically speaking anyway, they have been rather harsh on. The Chinese aren't coming back anytime soon as they have kind of moved on to other places like Japan and Vietnam after many many years of being abused by immigration, police, hotels, tour operators, basically anyone involved in tourism. You reap what you sow!

It will be interesting to see how the Nation handles this because it is going to be tough to simply "turn off" decades or perhaps longer, of staunchly held opinions of India here in Thailand.

While it is a bit rude to say I think that Thailand needs to at least somewhat embrace what their country actually is to a lot of the world: It is a cheap place where things that are illegal elsewhere in the world are not only not illegal, but are encouraged. It is a playground for debauchery and I'm kind of tired of everyone pretending as though it isn't.

My take on this was inspired by an article I read about Thailand increasing its routes to/from India. The rest of it is just my opinion formed from many years of living here and having ears and eyes.