I read an article recently about how the number of Chinese tourists visiting Thailand in a day dropped from 15 to 20 thousand down to just over 5,000. Many that are involved in the tourism industry have called this drop "catastrophic" and a "crisis."
As someone that has lived here and has seen the way that the Chinese tourists are treated though, I can totally understand why they would turn their back on a country that has basically abused them for a long period of time and treated them like ATM machines.
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it's quite easy to spot the Chinese tour groups because they will all be getting shuffled on and off of buses constantly and the tour operators have flags so that the people all know where to go despite language problems. I have witnessed this at various hotspots in Chiang Mai such as the downtown moat and especially at Tha Phae Gate, which is a very popular little park located right downtown that causes traffic problems constantly with all the buses picking up and dropping people off.
The people on these tours are likely at least a bit to blame for the way they are treated but at the same time I have witnessed these folks being treated like children or cattle, often being berated as if they were not paying for this trip. I spoke to a person that is involved in organizing these tours and there are also little "traps" that they put the group into such as taking them to a "famous market" that is actually not famous and not a market that anyone not on these tours would ever visit. They are shuffled to some out of the way location with overpriced crap at it and are basically forced to purchase souvenirs.
In another instance that I witnessed I happened to be flying back into Thailand from the United States and we went through China at the last leg of the flight. Because of this, most of the passengers were Chinese and when we exited the flight and were ushered to the immigration gates a person was collecting 1000 Baht (about 35 dollars) for each Chinese person that was arriving, when I got up to the front I was told "not you" and was ushered another direction. It appears that this is some unspoken "rule" that immigration had forced upon all Chinese people as some sort of entry tax that is not official and doesn't go on the books. Where does this money go? Well certainly into some sort of under-the-table operation of side money for the immigration officials.
once again, I suppose it is at least partially the fault of the Chinese people for tolerating this sort of treatment but everyone just seemed to fall in line as I didn't witness a single person out of the hundreds of people on the fight that refused to pay.
The official word of Immigration in Thailand is that Chinese citizens are entitled to a visa exemption of 60 days, just like a lot of other nationalities but the word was, and was verified by my own eyes that day, that if they do not pay this "tea money" that they are going to have a high level of trouble entering the country. From what I have heard is that Immigration will eventually let them in, because they have to, but they will make them wait for hours if they decide to not pay the bribe/tea money. This, apparently, has been going on for so long that the Chinese people just accepted this as part and parcel of visiting Thailand.
Now don't get the wrong idea. I love Thailand. But this doesn't mean that I am not going to ever be critical of how they run things. The Chinese tourism market was and is an incredibly lucrative one, especially for desirable countries that are located just an hour or two flight away from China. Thailand has enjoyed this money train for ages but now, because of abuse, the Chinese are deciding to travel elsewhere.
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now this chart is outdated, but you can see how Thailand put a lot of effort into getting the Chinese here in the first place and since then, I believe they have become at least somewhat dependent on them. Tourism is 20% of Thailand's overall GDP and this is one of the highest in the world.
There are also other factors that could be contributing to the drop but the word on the street and the word I got from my friend who works in this industry is that a large part of the reason why they have decided to not travel to Thailand is because there is a movement of sorts in Thailand that the people are tired of being abused. I think this is definitely understandable.
There was another incident in I believe it was Phuket, where about 50 Chinese people perished in a boat accident where the staff of the boat that were charged with their safety were the first to abandon ship and made what appeared to be very little to no effort to save the passengers. This was in the news for a while as the boat company, as well as the government scrambled to try to cover this up.
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Later, when the boat was recovered it was revealed or fabricated or whatever... that the boat failed to meet design specifications and was overloaded as well. 5 people were charged and the government made a bit show and dance about inspecting every single boat that left harbors in that area for.... about a few months.
I went to a small island near the Myanmar border during this time and it was the first time in my life that I had ever seen an official board a tourist boat to verify that safety precautions were still in place. I have since returned to that same island using the same methods and all of those precautions are gone now.
So will this down-trend in Chinese tourism continue? I doubt it. Here is what is going to happen: Thailand will "play nice" and offer incentives for Chinese nationals for a year or so and do away with the bribes until everyone forgets that they ever had a grudge with Thailand in the first place... then they will return to doing exactly what it was that made them want to leave in the first place.
It's kind of funny when you think about it. The definition of insanity is "doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result."