High Season in Pattaya

Written December 2010

Anyone gleefully knocking nails into Pattaya's tourist industry’s coffin should not be surprised to see the lid blasting off this high season.

I have been astonished by the explosion in tourism numbers in the town over the past couple of months, as the Asian (Chinese, Taiwanese, Korean and Japanese) tour group industry picks up again.

Parts of Pattaya increasingly resemble Dubai, with the huge numbers of Arab tourists here, and the Indian tourist trade remains very strong.  I have been told by an Arab friend in Oman that it is hard to find availability in the preferred Arab hotels in Pattaya this high season.

Add the resurgent Russian numbers and the return of many US, Antipodean and European visitors, for whom the exchange rates of old are now a distant memory, and you have a city which has yet again risen from the ashes, following the Bangkok troubles earlier this year.

It is also interesting to see the way these higher tourist numbers slowly but solidly change the economic and real estate base of the city.

The number of Russian-owned and Russian-oriented businesses around Pattaya increase by the week, and Russians working in the real estate, food & beverage, and tourism industry are increasingly renting apartments longer-term or buying cheaper units. There are also many new developments marketing strongly to Russian buyers.

Arabs are increasingly changing the tourist landscape here.

Sign of the Times

For the first time ever I saw a sign on Walking Street (pictured) exclusively in Arabic, advertising a club/disco (in the Clube Boesche complex). I took a look, but it wasn’t my cup of tea, a load of Arab guys, high-energy dancing together in a pack and shouting, throwing their hands up in the air. But it was harmless enough, and a sign that Pattaya is slowly changing to reflect the interests and money of the new tourist groups.

True, for impecunious long-stayers and retirees on pensions, things still look bleak as the baht remains strong, but for many business owners the drop-off in these customer groups in many cases has been made up for by the numbers of new tourists visiting Pattaya. Certainly malls, many  restaurants, clubs, bars and discos are thriving.

Of course, many of these tourists literally bypass go-gos and beer bars, but even these businesses only need a tiny fraction of the booming tourist numbers to come into their establishments to make a material difference to their bottom line, if they want them to (many still don’t).