How do marine events, regattas specifically, benefit Thailand´s tourism industry?
We’ve seen claims that regattas the size of Phuket Raceweek bring in 500m – 1bn Baht in additional tourism revenue to the destination. Clearly, if you work the numbers, such claims are wildly exaggerated; not even the King’s Cup – the biggest regatta in Asia – achieves anywhere near those numbers. Nevertheless, regattas do play an important role. On one level, they do directly attract visitors and tourism revenue (boat charters, hotel rooms, miscellaneous expenditure) to Thailand. On another, perhaps more significant, level they’re without doubt the best showcase – provided they achieve solid publicity – for yachting tourism in Thailand. And that’s where the big money will come from. How do you see Thailand´s marine industry developing over the next five years? It’s a sad, although not surprising, fact that ‘official Thailand’ does not really recognise the potential of marine (yachting) tourism. It’s almost certainly the single most underdeveloped aspect of Thailand’s tourism industry
