Skift Take
Reopening isn't just about giving tourists an entry pass, but having the ability to offer them the product they imagine it to be. In Thailand, both are a problem — unless the government acts.
Abandoned street life in Thailand's popular destinations sends a searing shock on how the pandemic has uprooted one of the kingdom's most unique attractions.
Once there wasn't an inch left on the soi's (local for side streets) to put yet another restaurant, bar or stall selling everything from beach hats and underwear to luggage and local art — a colorful snapshot of how much Thai people love to sell something. The footpath may be imperfect, the layout a mayhem, there could be a tattoo designer next to a seafood vendor — only in Thailand will you find this, and that's why street life is a huge part of the country's sense of place.
Today, the only sense you'll get is that a catastrophe has happened and a whole community of small tourist providers have had to flee, or simply perish.
For local industry leaders such as Christophe Vielle, CEO of GCP Hospitality Thailand, a hotel investment and management company that owns among others a Pullman in Bangkok and in Pattaya, that's "the biggest concern.”
“You talk about [a lack of] airlift? My biggest concern is that if business reopens in six months, how is it going to be in places like Phuket and Samui? They are dead! Go into the streets. Shops are not closed [temporarily]; the owners are gone, you see concrete,” he said during a session at the recent Hotel Investment Conference Asia-Pacific held online this year.
“It's going to take a very long time before we can give people what they are looking for. Unless the country gives a level of money when it reopens to entrepreneurs for them to [restart], this is the biggest issue. I went to Samui. I was shocked. Forget it if tomorrow you have one million people coming in — the island is gone.”
While Thailand, Southeast Asia's poster child of Covid-19 containment, continues to pore over various ideas to reopen safely, it may be overlooking the point that reopening doesn't just entail opening the gates to v
