The first official half of the year results on total tourism in Thailand has been released by the Ministry of Tourism and shows that although demographics have changed dramatically, a slight increase year over year has taken place with India and Japan driving the increase.
A total of 19,769,347 tourists visited Thailand from Jan-June (H1) this year, up 1.48% on H1 2018, the MoTS reports.
Total revenue generated through tourist arrivals for H1 2019 was given at B1.0224 trillion, also up 0.94% for the same period last year, the statistics showed.
The growth comes despite arrivals from Mainland China falling 4.73%, from 5,931,153 during H1 2018 to 5,650,474 in H1 this year.
Spending by Chinese tourists during the half also fell, from B323.46 billion last year to B310.47bn this year (-4.02%).
Asian source markets still held strong, with arrivals from Hong Kong increasing 5.83%, bringing an 8.4% increase in spending.
Likewise, visitors from Japan rose by 10.83% for the six months year on year, from 779,925 to 864,379, bringing a 14.57% increase in spending during the six months, from B32.58bn last year to B37.32bn this year.
Arrivals from Russia fell 2.99%, from 850,989 last year to 825,556 this year, with a 4.1% fall in spending, from B64.35bn in H1 2018 to B61.713bn in H1 this year.
European arrivals also fell year on year, down 1.86%, from 3,537,934 last year compared with 3,604,954 in H1 last year. Spending also fell 2.33%, from B264.962bn in H1 2018 to B258.779bn 19 in H1 2019.
Visitor arrivals for all the Scandinavian source markets fell year on year: Sweden -10.65 %, Denmark -3.25%, Finland -14.91%, Norway -0.18%.
However, visitor arrivals from the UK rose 1.38%, from 497,862 last year to 504,754 this year, with a 1.3% increase in spending, from B39.89bn last year to B40.40bn this year.
Arrivals from Eastern Europe also rose, by 4.25% year on year, with a 1.26% increase in spending to B21.818bn.
Also growing were arrivals from the US, rising +4.8% year on year to 595,226 in H1 2019, spending B45.287bn in the first half of the year
The number of visitors from Australia, however, continued to fall, from 384,644 in Jan-June 2018 to 377,260 this year (-1.92%), with a corresponding fall in spending from B31.04bn last year to B30.39bn this year (-2.09%).
Meanwhile, visitor arrivals from India during H1 2019 continued to boom, from 788,703 last year to 978,785 this year (+24.1%), with a 27.54% increase in spending from B30,857bn last year to B39.354bn this year.
Average spending per capita by tourists from India rose from B39,124 in H1 2018 to B40,207 in H1 2019.
However, while average spending per capita by Australian tourists to Thailand fell marginally from B80,698 for H1 2018 to B80,561 in H1 2019, the average Australian tourist still spent twice as much as the average Indian tourist.
