Miss Sudawan Wangsuphakijkosol, Minister of Tourism and Sports, revealed the statistics from the Economics Tourism and Sports Division that the total number of tourists that travelled to Thailand since 1 January – 31 December 2023 were 28,042,131 travellers, increasing by 151% YoY, with an accumulated revenue from travellers spending of THB 1.2 trillion.
The aforementioned number of tourists exceeded the 27 million travellers estimation that Miss Thapanee Kiatphaibool, Governor for Tourism Authority of Thailand, estimated in early December 2023, which was a downward adjustment from 30 million arrivals expected at the beginning of 2023.
The top 5 nationalities that came to Thailand were 1. Malaysia with 4,563,020 travellers, 2. China with 3,519,735 travellers, 3. South Korea with 1,658,688 travellers, 4. India with 1,626,720 travellers, and 5. Russia with 1,481,878 travellers.
In the last week of 2023 (25-31 Dec 2023), the amount of travellers coming to Thailand dropped by 0.90% WoW. This is due to the fact that the travellers started to slow down their travelling from 30 December 2023, mostly because of the decline of travellers in the ASEAN region, while travellers in other regions were still increasing from travelling during the New Year festival and Winter Holiday at the end of the year in Europe.
Moreover, the number of Russian and Chinese travellers rose from the prior week by 12.84% and 4.95%, respectively. Meanwhile, the number of Malaysians, South Koreans, and Indians decreased by 18.59%, 10.52%, and 3.60%, respectively.
The Fiscal Policy Office (FPO) estimated Thailand’s economy in 2024 to expand by 3.2% per year (an expected span of 2.2-4.2%), excluding the impact from measures by the government sector, especially the 10,000 digital wallet scheme.
The factors expected to support Thailand’s economy this year are private consumption and export with 3.1% and 4.4% of growth expectation, respectively. The said factors are also expected to support the confidence in the business sector with 3.5% of growth expectation per year. Moreover, the number of foreign travellers expected to travel in Thailand are 34.5 million.
