phuketrichard wrote: ↑Sat Jan 16, 2021 11:28 am in the 90's
it was only 500

...and only apllied if leaving by air. No such fee if you left by land border crossing (sometimes asking 10 Baht for overtime crossing, 555). Knowing the thais this will be one possible new fee in the near future..land departure tax is coming. My bet. Another few billion Baht for the generals to finance new toys.

If you can't afford to spend 300 baht, maybe you shouldn't travel.

Big Daikon wrote: ↑Sat Jan 16, 2021 12:36 pm If you can't afford to spend 300 baht, maybe you shouldn't travel.

The new fee is just an add-on to many already existing "farang only" taxes and as other members already mentioned it has zero benefits for us, its just the thai taxmen putting their hands into our pockets with a smile (and the teeth behind). At the end all those fees do add up, piss us of and influence our future travel decisions. Thailand needs to ATTRACT tourists and surely this new measure is not a step in the right direction to lure us back. Call it a negative promotion?

If you want the tourists back you should waive visa fees (as happened before), create promotions with benefit and do everything you can to be more attractive than your competitors who fihgt for the same tourist dolla. This measure shows that the decision makers have no clue about tourism.

quick math:

Loosing just 20K tourists a year (thats just 0,05% of the long term target of 40M) X 5000 Baht average expense per day X 14 days of average stay = 1.4 B lost in tourism revenue

Where is the logic in such an arrival tax? Plain stupid.

I imagine tne average tourist won't mind. Percentages be damned.

Have you seen what the air departure taxes are in the UK?