The government's move to regulate zero-dollar tours from mainland China is necessary, however, more long-term measures are needed to ensure fairness to all concerned.
Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha early this week gave an order that fraudulent tour operators or tourism activities that cause economic damage be dealt with strictly.
The focus of this order is the zero-dollar tour scam. Operated mostly by Chinese nationals, zero-dollar tours involve packages priced below cost to lure budget travellers to visit Thailand. Once here, the tourists are forced to buy overpriced goods and services including lewd entertainment from firms with links to the tour operators. There have been reports that those who refuse the additional payments were abandoned in the middle of the trip.
Such a practice obviously only benefits the fraudulent operators. Chinese tourists were tricked into buying cheap tour packages that often cost nothing more than airfare but then overcharged for trips to clubs or jewellery shops selling items at inflated prices.
As it turns out, the shops zero-dollar tourists are taken to spend their money are often operated by proxies of the tour operators who take the money and send it back to China. These tour gangs also reportedly avoid paying taxes here. They do not always have in their employment properly registered tour guides either.
The government may be correct to point out that the country is not gaining expected economic benefits from a sharp increase in the number of arrivals by Chinese tourists as a large portion of tourism income ends up in the hands of the operators. But that is not exactly the point. The point is this practice is not fair to travellers or other tour operators who conduct their business within legal bounds.
Thanks to the government's zero-tolerance policy, a crackdown on the exploitative tour service has begun in earnest over the past few weeks. Late last month, tourist police raided five companies alleged to be the country's biggest zero-dollar tour network. A week later on Sept 8, the Anti-Money Laundering Office confiscated more than 2,000 coaches and over 4.7 billion baht in cash from another company allegedly involved in the illegal enterprise.
Police later raided five more companies offering services and products ranging from car hire to jewellery and herbal products suspected of being in the scam network. Representatives of these companies denied all accusations and insisted in an appeal to Gen Prayut that their businesses are run by Thai nationals and are not involved in any illegal activities.
While the crackdown on illegal operators may be justified, the authorities should pay attention to a call by hundreds of Thai and Chinese tour agents for the government to clarify what exactly may be considered a "zero-dollar" tour scam and what are normal tourism activities.
Specifically, the agents urged the government establish clear measures to address the problem of exploitative tours while delineating which activities bus operators or shopping entrepreneurs can pursue in the tour business.
According to the Association of Thai Travel Agents, the sudden crackdown on tour operators catering mainly to Chinese tourists is expected to cause a drop in arrivals from China by more than 200,000 between Sept 12 and Oct 31 incurring a potential loss of 4.32 billion baht in tourism revenue.
The negative sentiment is not healthy for the country's tourism industry which after all still banks on Chinese tourists to drive up income especially during the last quarter. Instead of just launching crackdowns, the government should come up with a concrete platform on how it will deal with fraudulent tour operators, including a long-discussed regulation that will set a minimum price for tour services.