The Tourism Authority of Thailand predicts there will be 4.96 million trips and 16.6 billion baht in circulation in the country over the July 28-Aug 2 holidays.
TAT governor Yuthasak Supasorn said that with the estimated volume of domestic tours during the special holiday period the hotel occupancy rate was expected at 63%.
In the first two days of the long holiday, most trips were made to destinations within a radius of 200-300 kilometres, he said.
"Negative factors continue to be inflation and fuel prices that remain high though tending to decline. They are major obstacles to Thais' spending," Mr Yuthasak said.
The government announced a special holiday on Monday (July 31) at short notice, apparently to stimulate domestic tourism. If the extended holiday period had been announced long beforehand, people might have planned overseas trips including to Japan as the yen is fairly weak, the TAT governor said.
Last week the cabinet declared July 31 a special holiday to create a six-day break from Friday last week to Wednesday this week.
