Another View on the Value of Retired Expats to Thailand

[Jun]

I haven't and will not say any spending figures are a lie.

However:
1 Any government tourist authority has people employed to typically promote tourism. So they would certainly have an interest in demonstrating a good contribution from tourists to the economy.
2 I am amazed that Chinese visitors to the UK spend as little as £116 per night. In London, that barely covers one night in an IBIS hotel. OK, you might get this down to £40 a night away from the capital, but I would think a significant proportion of the stay is in London. There are also all the Chinese visitors to Harrods pushing the average up.

As an aside, the figures for Azerbaijan visitors to the UK might be somewhat inflated by the lady who spent £16 million in Harrods.

[Gaybutton]

the figures for Azerbaijan visitors to the UK might be somewhat inflated by the lady who spent £16 million in Harrods.

What in the world did she buy, the whole store?

I would love it if when she went back home she told customs nothing to declare - and got away with it. She probably could have too. It likely would cost her far less to bribe the customs officers than it would to pay the duties.

And out of that 16 million, whatever she bought was probably for herself - although maybe she might have given her husband a box of fudge or something. "Dear, I'm sorry. I might have overspent just a tad."

It reminds me of the spending sprees of Princess Lee Radziwill, although I never did figure out just what she was princess of . . .

[fountainhall]

What in the world did she buy, the whole store?

I understand she lives in London and so might not qualify as a tourist! She spent that amount over a 10 year period. Even so, it's a hell of a lot of cash. Her husband, a former Chairman of the Bank of Azerbaijan, is in jail for 15 years for defrauding it of $2.2 billion!!

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/1 ... ed-banker/

But there are people here in Bangkok who also spend a huge amount at that store. About ten years ago I was invited by a client to a dinner given by an elderly man who owned about 800 acres in the middle of Bangkok. He had a grandfather clock in the dining room. He asked everyone if they liked it. Well, I thought it was one of the ugliest I had seen, but what can you say?

I'm so glad you like it, he responded. I got it from Harrods. After seeing it, I demanded to see Mohammed al Fayed (the previous owner of the store). I told him I wanted 200 of the clocks and what discount would he give me! I beat him down by 40%, he proudly claimed! What happened to the other 199 clocks, I haven't the faintest idea!

[fountainhall]

Any government tourist authority has people employed to typically promote tourism. So they would certainly have an interest in demonstrating a good contribution from tourists to the economy

A perfectly understandable view. However, as I have pointed out, governments give their national tourism organisations a great deal of money to come up with tourism statistics on which future tourism strategies and all the expenditure that entails are based. So I have to ask as I asked in an earlier post - why would any NTO lie to their government, the international media and the international tourism organisations of which they are members? It is just not in anyone's interest.