About one-third of Thailand’s tourism business will diminish its liquidity to support the businesses in the second half of 2020, Tourism Council of Thailand President Chairat Trirattanajarasporn said. “The impact of COVID-19 will become most serious in the third quarter this year after many operators had tried to cut costs by letting some of their employees go, but after more than a million positions cut the situation still hasn’t improved, as no foreign tourists are allowed into the country yet. The council estimates that in the next 3 months up to 30% of tourism-related businesses in Thailand are at risk of shutting down permanently,” Chairat said. Operators have started to sell their hotels, resorts, restaurants, gift shops, and other establishments to investors, he said. 

Various measures were proposed to help the tourism sector

“The council had a meeting with Prime Minister gen Prayut Chan-o-cha on Friday (July 10) and proposed five measures to help tourism business operators. These measures are: Providing soft loans to entrepreneurs; considering moving the schedule up to open the country to foreign tourists under a practice similar to the travel bubble scheme; offering a discount on electricity bills, one of the main costs of hotel operators; having the Social Security Office extend the compensation payment to temporarily unemployed staff from June to December, and reducing the employer’s contribution to Social Security Fund from 4% to 1%,” Said Chairat.

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