Baht Continues to Weaken

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Gaybutton
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Re: Baht Continues to Weaken

Post by Gaybutton »

Jun wrote: Mon Aug 15, 2022 6:13 pm if a projected 10 million tourists is responsible for the recovery, imagine what 40 million would do ?
Thailand's TaT predicts large numbers of tourists, but the TaT has not exactly proven itself to be the most reliable source of information.

I believe the real question is how many foreign tourists really will come any time soon. I see the handwriting on the wall about Thailand making the same mistake as before - maybe not putting all of its eggs, but most of them, in the Chinese basket. But circumstances have changed for the Chinese too. Even if China ends all of its restrictions tomorrow, will the numbers of Chinese tourists be there as the TaT hopes?

I don't have any idea. For all I know, in the near future, maybe even as soon as this coming high season, there may be a far greater number of Chinese tourists going to Thailand than ever before. I believe the odds are against that and the reality will be far fewer than before. 40 million? Within the next three years? I just don't see that happening. I don't even see 10 million happening any time very soon.
Jun

Re: Baht Continues to Weaken

Post by Jun »

Gaybutton wrote: Mon Aug 15, 2022 6:55 pm For all I know, in the near future, maybe even as soon as this coming high season, there may be a far greater number of Chinese tourists going to Thailand than ever before. I believe the odds are against that and the reality will be far fewer than before. 40 million? Within the next three years? I just don't see that happening. I don't even see 10 million happening any time very soon.
For clarification, I just picked the 40 million tourists figure as a rounded off version of the 39 million that were seen pre-covid. I see no immediate risk of that with covid restrictions in some countries, plus high energy prices.

As for 2022 numbers, the most recent month for which I can see data is June, for which 0.77 million is the figure. https://tradingeconomics.com/thailand/tourist-arrivals

Annualised, that amounts to 9.2 million, so not far off the 10 million.
However, given 5 slow months in early 2022, they will need a far higher arrivals rate in the remainder of the year to get 10 million in 2022. From a very rough interpretation of the graph, that's about 2 million tourists in the first 6 months. So they need 1.3 million per month in the second half of the year to hit 10 million in 2022.
As the Thai pass was lifted on 1 July, I wouldn't rule out some uplift in numbers ?

As for China, well they are still pursuing "zero covid" policies. Here is a recent example: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-62547503
I'm slightly surprised that their dear leader has backed off on quarantine for travel to just 10 days, however even that ought to deter tourists.
I don't know how long he will persist with this nonsense, however, obviously the Chinese vaccines are not much use and the vaccination rate amongst the elderly is low. So if they did relax restrictions, I imagine there would be a lot of deaths.
China ought to have access to mRNA vaccines, since whilst Biontech licensed their technology to Pfizer for most markets, they licensed it to a Chinese company for the Chinese market. For some reason, China has decided not to use it.
The obvious way forward is to roll out mRNA vaccines and once they have a good vaccine, find some way of persuading or coercing* the elderly to take it as well. Then drop restrictions. [*I would think the Chinese are used to coercion].

As far as I can tell, hordes of Chinese tourists are not imminent.
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Re: Baht Continues to Weaken

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Jun wrote: Mon Aug 15, 2022 7:32 pm As far as I can tell, hordes of Chinese tourists are not imminent.
In other words and in short we agree (I think) . . .
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Re: Baht Continues to Weaken

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"In the land of the blind the one eyed man is king"
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Re: Baht Continues to Weaken

Post by Dodger »

The Bank of Thailand's prediction of 19 million tourists visiting Thailand in 2023 seems a bit ambitious to me.

If Thailand had around 40 million tourist arrivals pre-covid-19, and half of those (20 million) were Chinese, I think Thailand will be lucky to see 12-14 million tourists next year as the Airline Industry struggles to rebound and gas/oil prices normalize (hopefully). It could be years before anyone sees the Chinese here...yeah!

The Thai baht has weakened primarily due to external factors that Thailand has little or no control over. This is where trying to predict the future of exchanges rates becomes impossible. Too many moving pieces on a very unstable planet.
Jun

Re: Baht Continues to Weaken

Post by Jun »

Dodger wrote: Tue Aug 23, 2022 4:00 pm The Bank of Thailand's prediction of 19 million tourists visiting Thailand in 2023 seems a bit ambitious to me.

If Thailand had around 40 million tourist arrivals pre-covid-19, and half of those (20 million) were Chinese, I think Thailand will be lucky to see 12-14 million tourists next year as the Airline Industry struggles to rebound and gas/oil prices normalize (hopefully). It could be years before anyone sees the Chinese here...yeah!
I guess they are assuming some recovery in Chinese tourist numbers. That rather depends on what their dear leader decides.
Perhaps they are waiting for a decent vaccine before abandoning this zero covid nonsense ? Or maybe he wants to use this as an excuse to move to a Soviet style situation with less freedom of movement ?
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Re: Baht Continues to Weaken

Post by Dodger »

This month (August) ended with an exchange rate of 36.29 to the USD. (money transfer purchase price)

Baht still weakening.

Some Analysts still predicting 37.0/USD by years end.

Right on track.
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Re: Baht Continues to Weaken

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Dodger wrote: Thu Sep 01, 2022 8:06 am Some Analysts still predicting 37.0/USD by years end.
I hope they're right - and more . . .

At the time of this post, the Wise exchange rate is 36.7
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Re: Baht Continues to Weaken

Post by Up2u »

Wired money today, exchange rate received was 36.5THB.
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Re: Baht Continues to Weaken

Post by 2lz2p »

Gaybutton wrote: Thu Sep 01, 2022 8:29 am At the time of this post, the Wise exchange rate is 36.7
That is the rate I rec'd from Wise with my transfer initiated yesterday. At the moment of writing this, they show the rate to be: 36.7800 (8 hrs).
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