Rapid Assessment for Resilient Recovery and ... - GFDRR

Tourism Sector
Summary
Thailand’s tourism is the envy of many Southeast Asian economies for its diversity and
longevity. Key to its success is the economically productive leveraging of rich cultural offerings,
stunning beaches and distinctive hospitality. The sector was noted as the top export
for the country each year from 2008 through 2010. With attractive destinations spread
throughout Thailand, it attracts a significant volume of foreign visitors and supports a wide
range of informal and formal enterprises. However, integral to the sector’s performance is
its high volume of domestic travelers motivated by festivals and religious events tied to the
country’s 35,000 temples, the sunny beaches from Phuket to Pattaya, as well as the cool
hillsides of Chiang Mai and the northern provinces. Both Thai and foreign travel consumption
combines to create a globally competitive and integrated, high-profile sector that is tied
to national pride and noted for its resilience.
Thailand’s tourism sector is well versed in crisis response and recovery. Experienced in
responding to health, political and natural crises such as SARS, the 2004 tsunami and the
more recent May 2010 turmoil, Thailand’s mobilization of public and private sector collaboration
has enabled a pattern of impressive returns. These returns had reached pre-crisis
levels before this year’s flooding.
Even with this robust set of capabilities, the current disaster presents another challenge.
Unlike the tsunami’s sudden and immediately felt impact, the evolving temporal and spatial
nature of the current flooding creates significant direct impacts in flood-affected provinces,
as well as notable cascading effects across the country. This is reflected in the perceptions
of potential travelers who translate specific local images into a picture that “all of Thailand is
underwater”. This change is happening in an increasingly competitive context as Malaysia
aggressively promotes its tourism and Viet Nam continues to diversify its offerings following
Thailand’s successful tourism model. In addition, Myanmar’s potential tourism prowess is
noteworthy in this context. Thus, the current challenge for Thailand’s tourism sector is not
only to recover from damage. Its true mandate is to leverage this current crisis to buildback-better
in order to continue to fully capture the sector’s economic benefits and maintain
competitiveness.
Damage related to the sector’s lodging, attraction and services assets are still evolving
and are highly province specific. In many locations, early awareness of possible flooding
enabled the private sector to prepare and minimize damage. However, flood damage to
lodging enterprises included primarily ground floors with capital-intensive public spaces,
restaurants and kitchens. Damage to attractions ranged from minimal effects to structural
impacts particularly with related assets not movable to higher ground. In addition, a typically
underestimated effect is the impact of the flooding on the sector’s forward and backward
linkages. These include both formal and informal SME agribusiness, handicraft and tour
guiding enterprises.
Reconstruction and recovery needs traverse efforts of differing rhythm and responsibility.
Direct damage reconstruction is determined to be primarily private sector driven through
insurance coverage and securing of soft loans. Recovery, however, calls for implementation
by the public and private sectors of rapid, cohesive and on-going marketing and promotion
44 THAI FLOOD 2011 RAPID ASSESSMENT FOR RESILIENT RECOVERY AND RECONSTRUCTION PLANNING