Take a stroll through Bangkok or any other Asian city these days, and it won't be long before you bump into a Chinese tourist or a group of them. They're everywhere in Thailand, thanks in large part to the waiver of the 1,000-baht visa fee for Chinese and Taiwanese citizens.
The incentive was put in place from August to October in an attempt to revive a tourism market that was refusing to bounce back, even after the military coup returned happiness to everyone else.
Well, the tourism numbers are finally back in the black, inflated by more than 1 million Chinese in October and November alone — 400,000 more than in the same period a year earlier. They're among an estimated 100 million Chinese who will travel abroad this year.
And what fun they have once they leave home. Take the couple on the Thai AirAsia jet headed for Nanjing, who went nuts when they found they weren't seated together. She flung scalding water at a flight attendant, and he threatened to blow himself up. The captain turned back to Bangkok and the lovebirds were booted off.
When they returned home, all four people in the couple's group were blacklisted from travelling by the provincial tourism board. The tour guide also had had his licence suspended for a year.
A few days later, a Chinese passenger on a domestic flight in China sparked a safety scare by yanking open an emergency exit just before takeoff to "get some fresh air". Luckily, maintenance staff fixed the door. The airline didn't punish the passenger but commentators on social media said he should have been fined for posing a safety risk to other passengers.
It gets worse. In Thailand, social media were abuzz with tales of a tourist believed to be a mainlander defecating in the fitting room of a fashion store at an upscale shopping mall. No, it's not on YouTube as there was no CCTV, in case you were wondering.
Another outbreak of Blame-the-Chinese Fever occurred when a witness saw a group of Chinese tourists knocking down barriers put up to protect some murals, just for fun. When officials intervened, the tourists just made excuses until they were told their actions had been captured on CCTV, at which point they went quiet and were let off the hook.
I myself feel really annoyed whenever I see Thai names engraved on stone at local temples or at tourist destinations elsewhere. These are not things well-mannered people should do. But the above-mentioned stories are really extreme and in some cases, posed safety threats.
In Thailand, tourism is one of the few hopes left for driving the lacklustre economy this year and next as other drivers such as exports, consumption and government spending have yet to show signs of life. Tourism revenue accounts for 10% of GDP but the sector has been struggling since late 2013 when political protests took off. As turmoil intensified ahead of the coup, the Tourism and Sports Ministry revised down its tourism revenue target from 2 trillion baht to 1.9 trillion for this year.
But the rapid post-coup recovery in tourism that everyone had been expecting has been slow to arrive. International visits rose for the first time in October and again in November, but the year-to-date figure was still down 8.6% from a year earlier as of Nov 30.
The numbers would have been far worse without the free-visa promotion. Arrivals from China spiked 67% in October to 501,000, and rose another 58% last month to 513,441, bringing the 11-month total to 4.13 million. The Association of Thai Travel Agents earlier had estimated Chinese arrivals of 4.3 million this year, but the current trend suggests the final number will be very close to the 4.7 million seen last year.
Given such quantity, if that's what the country's tourism braintrust is really interested in, how much quality should we seriously expect? The international headlines may highlight isolated cases, but they add to a long list of jaw-dropping bad behaviour that has seriously undermined the image of mainland tourists.
China is taking such misbehaviour seriously, to the point of publishing an etiquette guidebook (hint: don't spit in public!) for its citizens going abroad. Measures such as sanctions — also by the destination country where appropriate — should send the right message that tourists acting out of line will not be condoned.
As Thais have been allowed to travel to Japan without visas for 15 days, some Japanese have begun to think of Thai tourists visiting their country the same way Thais think of Chinese visiting our country. Does Thailand have to do something before this perception becomes widespread and tarnishes our reputation?