Many parts of the Thailand tourism sector had become dependent on high arrivals from Russian tourists over the past 5 years or more, with Phuket and Pattaya greatly benefitting. Over the past 12 months, the Russian economy has been on shaky ground, which has been felt across Thailand’s tourist sector, but the good news is that Russian arrivals are expected to dramatically rise once again like phoenix from the flames.
The Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) have shown a great deal of confidence when suggesting that the Russian economy might soon be back on track and that we can expect much more visitors from Russian to Thailand this year.
Russia is actually Thailand’s largest source of European arrivals. In 2006, the yearly arrivals from Russia was a mere 187,653, rapidly growing to 1.6 million in 2014. Unsurprisingly, the figures had halved since 2014, due to the Russia’s economic woes.
Thai tourism officials recently visited the biggest travel trade event in Russia to get more of an insight into the Russian holidaymakers’ way of thinking.
From January 2015 to July, more than 500,000 Russians have visited Thailand and the number is expected to reach almost 1 million over the course of the year, which means the crisis is on the mend.
These new figures have given us yet another positive thing to consider as we are currently moving towards the high-season months, which is an important time for the island and its businesses.
