Thailand Tourism Case Study

Abstract

In low-income countries, the use of tax revenues to fund tourism promotions is motivated in part by the belief that tourism growth will improve income distribution by expanding demand for relatively low-skilled labor. Thailand’s tourism boom, fueled in part by a series of publicly funded promotional campaigns, has coincided with a period of worsening inequality. I find that growth of inbound tourism demand raises aggregate household income, but worsens its distribution. This is because tourism sectors are not especially labor-intensive in the Thai context, and because the expansion of foreign tourism demand creates general balance effects that undermine profitability in tradable sectors such as agriculture from which the poor derive

“Visitor exports,” or sales of tourism goods and services to foreign visitors, averaged US$ 10.2 billion (bn) (12% of total exports) in 1998–2005 on more than 10 million annual visitor arrivals. The next largest category of exports, computers and parts, averaged US$ 8.5 bn in the same period.3 On average during 1998–2005, Thai tourism directly and indirectly accounted for 13% of GDP, 10% of employment (3 million jobs), and 12% of investment. Using the industry’s GDP share as a measure, Thailand is ranked 60 of 174 countries in the World Tourism and Travel Council’s global tourism satellite accounts (TSA). (s tourism-based development good for the poor?: A general equilibrium analysis for Thailand (6th ed., Vol. 30, p. 2). (2008).

Pro-poor tourism is defined as a tourism that generates benefits for the poor, not only economic benefits, but also positive sociocultural and environmental benefits (Ashley, Roe, & Goodwin, 2001). It is understood that the core aim of pro-poor tourism (PPT) strategies is to unlock opportunities for the poor, rather than to expand the overall size of the sector (Ashley & Roe, 2002, p. 62). However, as case studies in this paper show, PPT cannot succeed without having in mind the participatory in tourism development ethics as community-based tourism for those ethnic community minorities.

Pro-poor tourism is not a specific product or sector of tourism, but an approach to the industry. It involves a range of stakeholders operating at different levels, from micro to macro. Stakeholders include the government, the private sector and civil society, as well as the poor themselves, who act as both producers and decision-makers and contributes to the tourism development.

There are number of reasons for tourism development agencies, in both the public and private sectors, to develop pro-poor tourism strategies as a priority agenda in practice. The two main reasons are suggested as