clutchcargo wrote: ↑Sat Sep 14, 2019 7:01 pm This article is written from the perspective of a hotelier and if true they get greater numbers and payment up front and at a higher price, it all makes sense they prefer those tourists. Fair enough.

The bit about hoteliers preferring Chinese customers was from an anecdotal blog written in 2018. It may or may not be true that the Chinese customers pay more but that is not the only relevant issue. I have noticed in some hotels where certain nationalities are predominant that they have a pay first policy and a prominent tariff in the room of charges applicable if things go missing from the room.

John Bingham wrote: ↑Sat Sep 14, 2019 7:05 pm Yes, you probably get counted as a cheap-charlie
Western tourist and are skewing the figures.

My point exactly but I didn't express it as courteously.

phuketrichard wrote: ↑Sat Sep 14, 2019 7:14 pm

Cowshed Cowboy wrote: ↑Sat Sep 14, 2019 6:45 pm How do they know how much individual tourists spend ? No one ever asked me when I was on holiday.

I have also wondered about that when i see stats but than i think;
Thailand tracks every hotel you stay at, ( as do most countries ) they can track all ur credit card charges/atm exchanges, (Chinese almost exclusively use their pay cards) as do Koreans and Japanese.
They track when you change money and the amount
They track you even when you send a box thru the mail nowadays

The days of anonymous travel are over..

Good point on the exchange booths, less sure about credit card charging. wouldn't have thought they would know who is a tourist and who is working in country or country of credit card. It's possible, likely, bigger hotels that are tax registered have to fill out some sort of revenue split by country for govt statistical purposes with their monthly or quarterly tax returns, Hanno might be able to confirm that one.

Cowshed Cowboy wrote: ↑Sat Sep 14, 2019 7:34 pm

phuketrichard wrote: ↑Sat Sep 14, 2019 7:14 pm

Cowshed Cowboy wrote: ↑Sat Sep 14, 2019 6:45 pm How do they know how much individual tourists spend ? No one ever asked me when I was on holiday.

I have also wondered about that when i see stats but than i think;
Thailand tracks every hotel you stay at, ( as do most countries ) they can track all ur credit card charges/atm exchanges, (Chinese almost exclusively use their pay cards) as do Koreans and Japanese.
They track when you change money and the amount
They track you even when you send a box thru the mail nowadays

The days of anonymous travel are over..

Good point on the exchange booths, less sure about credit card charging. wouldn't have thought they would know who is a tourist and who is working in country or country of credit card. It's possible, likely, bigger hotels that are tax registered have to fill out some sort of revenue split by country for govt statistical purposes with their monthly or quarterly tax returns, Hanno might be able to confirm that one.

There would be a lot of approximations and assumptions built into their models to produce those figures. They likely would filter on foreign credit cards, length of stay (i.e. rule out residents), whether credit card charges included airfare or hotel lodgings. Some tourists would get excluded from their models and some non-tourists would end up included. It would depend on whether the margin of error was big enough to skew figures. Credit card issuers and banks will
sell this (aggregated and anonymized) data to any willing buyer along with most financial institutions. So will any large business such as hotel chains.

My guess is if the source of those figures is professional and includes things like credit card data, ATM, exchange counters its probably a reasonable calculation. It would also improperly count edge cases like transit passengers and exclude those travelling off the grid, i.e. those with cash, buses at border crossings etc.

If the primary audience is the big hotels and hotel chains the n the data may be exclusively those who use the hotels. Much easier to calculate and they would not care about anyone who is not staying with them.

My completely anecdotal experience is Chinese shop a lot when they travel; they trust what they are buying is authentic and (at least until recently) many of the things may not be available to them, especially if not in a large city like Beijong or Shanghai. There are a lot who travel to Hong Kong just to buy luxury goods.

phuketrichard wrote: ↑Sat Sep 14, 2019 7:14 pm

Cowshed Cowboy wrote: ↑Sat Sep 14, 2019 6:45 pm How do they know how much individual tourists spend ? No one ever asked me when I was on holiday.

I have also wondered about that when i see stats but than i think;
Thailand tracks every hotel you stay at, ( as do most countries ) they can track all ur credit card charges/atm exchanges, (Chinese almost exclusively use their pay cards) as do Koreans and Japanese.
They track when you change money and the amount
They track you even when you send a box thru the mail nowadays

The days of anonymous travel are over..

Research like this is never based on real data available, but based on some kind of sampling. The way you sample will determine the results.

Having said that, any study grouping 35 very different countries to 'The Americas' shouldn't be taken too seriously.

CamExpat wrote: ↑Sat Sep 14, 2019 8:32 pm
My completely anecdotal experience is Chinese shop a lot when they travel; they trust what they are buying is authentic and (at least until recently) many of the things may not be available to them, especially if not in a large city like Beijong or Shanghai. There are a lot who travel to Hong Kong just to buy luxury goods.

I guess that's why the Arabs are high in the list. I've seen them bringing a 70 inch (or larger) TV, or even several ones, from BKK to their home country.

I'm now going to call horseshit on the figures "Dan about Thailand" has published in his article. A quick google of the Tourism Authority of Thailand's official figures show that of the 38.28m tourists that visited Thailand in 2018 China accounted for just over 10.5m representing 27.5% of the total. Year to date June 2019 Chinese tourist arrivals have declined 4.7% year on year during that timeframe with the Yuan losing 10.5% of it's value against the baht. ( Sterling lost 10.7% to the baht for the same period ).

It should be noted that Dan Cheeseman is the owner of ThaiVisa and anyone that follows that forum or his previous blog articles will know that in order to attract clickbait to his sites, he riles his core audience with the Visa Situation/Western Currency Weakness and Chinese are the future slant.

Just saying.

I'm not disagreeing with the change in demographics just the misleading extent quoted.

Cowshed Cowboy wrote: ↑Sun Sep 15, 2019 12:19 pm I'm now going to call horseshit on the figures "Dan about Thailand" has published in his article.

Thaivisa have changed their mind and now they agree with you.
https://forum.thaivisa.com/topic/112402 ... -hotelier/

their coming back
Chinese tourists are heading back to Thailand at last

BANGKOK: The number of Chinese tourists visiting Thailand topped one million in August for the first time in six months, brightening an otherwise dim outlook for the nation’s economy.

Chinese arrivals surged almost 19% to 1.03 million during the month compared with a year earlier, Tourism Ministry data showed Wednesday. Overall visitor growth of 7.4% was the strongest this year.

https://www.thestar.com.my/business/bus ... nd-at-last