Hello and welcome to the High-Yield Tourism Podcast. On today’s show, we’ll be discussing high-yield tourism in Thailand with Khun Chattan Kunjara, former Deputy Governor of the Tourism Authority of Thailand. So, let’s get started. This is High-Yield Tourism.

Hello, and thanks for listening in. Today we’re delighted to welcome to the show Khun Chattan Kunjara, former Deputy Governor of the Tourism Authority of Thailand. During a 37-year career, Khun Chattan was at the forefront of Thailand’s conversion to become one of the world’s most popular tourism destinations. But what happens next? As competition intensifies to attract tourists across Asia-Pacific, we’ll be discussing Thailand’s new tourism strategy.

Kun Chattan, how do you define high-yield tourism in the context of Thailand’s tourism strategy?

Well, Khun Jens, for many years, we based that on the income an individual would get during the year. So he may have a high-ranking position in a company. He may have assets. It would amount to, say, perhaps a million dollars a year or something like that. But then we found that was hard to ascertain. Okay, how do you know who earns what during the year? So I think we eventually shifted to how much they spend in a country when they travel. Okay, so I think eventually, we settled on something like $500 a night, a day or something, including, you know, accommodation, shopping, food, and everything. To me, I think that’s more accurate, but it’s closer to what we need to see, okay? Rather than basing it on the revenue that a person generates by himself or herself, we look at how they spend when they travel.

No, I think that’s obviously very interesting. And a lot of destinations look, I think, at high-yield tourism really more at the almost like luxury tourism side of it. And obviously, there’s some validity to that. But I think we are looking also at the contribution to the local economy and the economic value. But Thailand obviously is a great destination with a really strong tourism brand, but also with some very aggressive visitor targets. Why is it important for Thailand to transition from this focus of mass tourism to more a high-yield tourism strategy?

Well, that’s a very good question. I think it comes down to carrying capacity. You were in Thailand for a number of years. You would have seen that a lot of places just weren’t able to handle a large number of visitors throughout the year or even for a certain period of time. Okay, so that is the basics of mass tourism. So it means that you have to get a lot of people in and hopefully through the numbers that will come, you will meet your revenue target, even though each individual or each group may not spend that much, but you reach it by sheer numbers. In essence, that is not sustainable, as we all know, because the infrastructure of the destination, whether it’s a province, whether it’s a community, whether it’s a beach, cannot keep up with transportation, sanitation, what have you. Everything cannot keep up. And eventually you find that there’s environmental degradation, there’s safety issues and so on and so forth. OK, so. I mean, some places, here in Thailand, I mean, can handle a certain number. OK, but a lot of places can not, especially the secondary cities, provinces that we want to push people to. Therefore, the thinking is that, of course, we cannot tell people not to come. OK, those people that come in groups, you know, large numbers, they will continue to come. But there’s always an opportunity to get high-yield visitors to certain areas at a certain time of the year to do certain things. That is Thailand’s tourism mindset at the moment.

At the moment. Khun Chattan, I’m very interested to learn about how your strategy has changed since the pandemic. During the pandemic, I mean, you yourself were very transparent. You did a lot of interviews, presentations, talking about Thailand really wanted to get tourism back. It was at the forefront, really, in Southeast Asia of that push to bring back tourism after the pandemic. How did it change the thinking in terms of tourism strategy and high-yield tourism for the future?

It changed everything, Khun Gary. That’s something I like to talk about always. You know how it changed? Before COVID, TAT essentially, we still are the marketing agency. Our job was to push people to the provinces, to each destination. The provinces, the local governments, have to figure out how to handle the people. That’s their job. It’s not essentially our job. We did our job, getting people to come and to go. What experience they get, the visitors get, that’s really not us then. But when COVID came, this is very interesting, the destinations, especially the provinces, they had to say whether they wanted to open again to tourism and how. We could not move a finger if they said no. We had to get their approval. And in that case, we had to go down and talk to each and every one of the people there, you know, from the local government to the village headsmen to everyone involved. Number one, very simple question, do you want travelers to go? Because think back, and it seems like ancient history now, but think back, this is only like three or four years ago, right? People were really afraid of COVID. The foreigners, do they bringing COVID? Are we safe? It’s a simple question. Do you want visitors? Are you willing to accept a certain amount of risk? If you want visitors, how? Okay, in what fashion? Who do you want to come? So it was a lengthy process of negotiations, creating understanding. And it was a slow process, but it was necessary. And if you remember correctly, if you recall, we could not open the whole country. Okay, we had to go city by city, which we never had to do, Khuna Gary and Khun Jens, you know. Before COVID, the whole country was open for travel, right? But then everything closed down, so we had to select Phuket first, followed by Koh Samui, and then Pattaya, Chiang Mai, etc. Okay, so that, like I said, you know, to make a long story short, COVID changed everything. It compelled us, it compelled the government to talk to the stakeholders. I don’t want to say that didn’t happen before, but it happened really continuously and in depth, you know, once COVID came and we’re still doing that.

That’s a fascinating insight. So once you had reopened, once you’d gone through this process of working out how regions and local authorities would handle going forward, you then reopened into what became a very competitive regional landscape. Everybody was opening around about the same time. What was the next phase? How did you then take it forward to develop? Because, you know, tourists have come back very, very quickly to Thailand. How has the strategy changed?

Well, Thai tourism prided ourselves very much on segmentation. Even before COVID, we did a lot of segmentation research. We went after certain segments, including high-yield travelers. And in that sense, when the competition bloomed, if you will, like you said, segmentation was our strong point. We just could not open to everyone. We could not accept everyone. So we went after a few segments in a few countries. It was a step-by-step approach. And I thought that was the difference. You know, a lot of countries, they opened it to, well, I’m not naming names, but to everyone everywhere. Right. And for us, that wasn’t sustainable. OK, so we had to go to certain markets and get certain segments to come.

I think segmentation obviously is fascinating. And there are lots of destinations that are looking at that. And I think what’s unique about Thailand’s strategy is this whole shift towards soft power. And when Thailand introduced the five Fs, food, fight, fashion, festivals and film, which essentially are kind of integrated into the segmentation, if you’re looking to get wellness travelers, adventure travelers, culinary travelers and so on. So what role really have the five Fs played? In essence to drive a tourism strategy and really building Thailand’s tourism brand, a unique positioning?

I love 5Fs. Let me say it right from the start. I didn’t originate the idea, obviously, but I was embracing, my team was embracing 5Fs. Why? On and off, for a lot of years, we were selling soft power. We just didn’t say soft power, but we were promoting food. We were promoting a lot of stuff that you find in your everyday life in Thailand. But with 5Fs, with the soft power, we were repackaging everything into a nice, neat, easily understandable, easily digestible package. Package, it means that the consumers, they could understand better. They could visualize what they will find when they come to Thailand. Obviously, Khun Jens and Khun Gary, it’s good, you know, amazing Thailand, exotic Thailand, whatever. But it doesn’t tell you what you can find. You know, it’s the vision, the dream, right? But with soft power. We’re selling or promoting products, tangible products, okay? Which the visitors can find in your daily trips here in the country. Food, fashion, fight, meaning Muay Thai, okay? Festivals, if you come during a festival time, and film, meaning film locations, okay? That’s very easily understandable, okay? But the game changer, guys, is not… only for the consumers is how we market. As marketers, it makes the job a lot easier for us because then we can focus on a few things. It’s not an overarching, you know, dream concept of amazing that, amazing that, you know, whatever, you know. This time, we were able to focus on Pad Thai and just add in Pad Thai during Songkran in Chiang Mai, for example. So it was an amalgamation of many things which we could sell directly to consumers.

Was that also a good way to sell it to consumers, to travelers, to better understand sort of the national personality of Thailand in some ways? But did it also help you sell it to the regions in terms of them understanding what the… the national focus was and how tourism could change in the country. There were these different options. They were divisible. You know, you could promote what was locally beneficial and what was an advantage in local authorities for tourism.

Absolutely, Khun Gary, that’s a very good point. The local governments, you know, we were happy to work with them, but they needed something that they also could understand and easily promote. So, for example, take food. OK, every region or every province would have its signature dish or go-to food. Then they were having food festivals around that thing. OK, or they had a fashion festival or whatever around the silk that they have, for example. So it made everything easier. We as the national marketer, we were happy to have these products to sell, to promote. And the stakeholders, the local governments, the villages, the handicrafts workshops and so on, they were happy to come on board, you know, because we were bringing customers to them and now they could focus on providing the best experience.

I mean, it’s obviously fascinating. And then, if you link the five Fs to this concept of Thainess. You have a whole platform around storytelling to really inspire people, not just to go to a beach, but actually experience the beach in a Thai way with these products and services that you have developed. What would be interesting for me to understand is then, did you actually measure to see if more money was being spent, but also more money stayed in the destination? Hence, this whole concept of high-yield tourism. Were there economic benefits resulting from this concept of the 5F and Thainess?

Yeah, we did a lot of surveys, Khun Jens. With revenue, it’s not like arrivals, as you know. Arrivals can be easily obtained, you know, the numbers. With revenue, it took a bit of time, okay? Our source of information, whether, you know, the question is, are visitors spending more? Are you getting more high-yield? Visitors, you know, the hotels in the regional areas, that helped us a lot. They were able to report an increase in occupancy and increase in, if they wanted to increase room rates, were there still, you know, customers that come? No, we got that. We got that. Of course, not every hotel reported that. That’s not a possibility. But certain hotels in certain destinations at a certain time. For example, for Hat Yai, you know, they always have an influx of Malaysian visitors. But when there’s a festival or when there’s a long holiday in Malaysia, then the room rates go up. OK, and everyone’s happy. You know, the rooms are full and so on. So that’s how we get our info. I think what’s happening is that it does work, Khun Jens and Khun Gary. It does work. The focus on getting high-yield people to secondary destinations to places beyond Bangkok, Phuket, and so on, but not the whole year, which is good, you know, so we can channel people or do promotions to get people to a certain place at a certain time of year.

Can I reference, I’m sure you get asked about this very, very often, Khun Chattan, but in terms of film and movies and TVs, this is a very, very hot topic, particularly in Asia right now. I guess one of the most anticipated events of 2025 relates to Thailand, and that’s the White Lotus. TAT was a partner in that production, if I’m not wrong. How can you use that to tell the stories, not just for Koh Samui, but for the country as a whole? What can you leverage from that?

Well, it’s huge. I was at the very, very beginning of getting White Lotus to come. I don’t take credit for their eventual landing in the country, but I don’t expect people to come to only Koh Samui. Of course, a number will come just to follow the film location and the filming and all that. But I guess what… what’s happening is the image overall, you know, of a country, you know, as a place of mystique, you know, with attributes and so on. It’s the complete picture. And when you get a show like White Lotus, which is very, how would I say, scenery -showing kind of place, you know, and there’s a story, there’s a compelling story behind that. It creates that aura, you know, so it does help. It does help a lot.

And you also have a very famous Thai star as well in the show.

Well, I’ve seen the trailer. I hope she gets her fair share of a role, you know, but, you know, she’s world famous, and she’s been a really good brand ambassador for the country, even though she’s not the official tourism brand ambassador, but she’s been awesome. That’s Lisa from Blackpink, right? Yes, yes. To put it mildly, yes.

Oh, great. So I think that’s interesting, obviously, kind of leveraging this whole positioning platform. But then now from the demand side, obviously, there’s a lot of source markets that you’re looking at. I mean, China, obviously, being a big one for Thailand. but you have other ones as well, and there are obviously other emerging markets. How have you looked at diversifying your source markets to really making sure that you attract the right travelers that actually bring economic benefits to the country?

Well, we are, I use the word again, compelled to do so. For a certain time, Khun Jens, we had relied on only a few markets, a few major source markets. Even though we had offices in nearly all the major markets, but we relied on only a few markets. But then certain events or occurrences happened that impacted that market. So we were compelled to diversify countries and segments. For example, I bring up COVID again. We got travelers from countries that weren’t really that significant to us before, like Israel, like Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia. You know, those countries were really minimal before. But although they don’t reach the millions of people, that’s okay because they come consistently, and they spend, you know, per head, those are the high-yield travelers that we want more of, okay? And it’s not about the spending. These customers, they appreciate the country, you know, they appreciate the culture, they appreciate how they are treated here, you know, and that’s always important. I’m not saying that the other countries… The other nationalists don’t appreciate it. But these, because maybe they’re new to us and we’re new to them, they appreciate it more. Okay, so it’s always very important to never stop diversifying your targets, but always find people that appreciate you.

I think that’s interesting. I think if we now go closer to home, you look at new emerging markets further away from Thailand. But if we’re looking closer to home, I got maybe like a double question here. One is obviously regional travel in ASEAN, in the Mekong region. And, you know, I’m a big fan of the potential of regional travel. But then also, I think one thing that we’ve seen during COVID is the whole thing around domestic travel and the power that that can have as well. How do you look at building that into your demand strategy?

Because of domestic travel, you know, I mean, meaning Thais traveling in Thailand, you know, we were able to survive COVID. Because if you remember, the country closed down, you know, in what, 2021, we, okay, 2019, we had 40 million foreign visitors, okay? 2021, we had 300,000. I mean, the industry, the tourism industry basically collapsed. But we were able to keep it going and bring hope because of Thais traveling in Thailand. Of course, they couldn’t go anywhere else. But if you don’t have this impetus in encouraging people to travel in the country, they would just stay home. But they did travel to a certain degree. So, I mean, they’re always important. Now, after COVID, my team or my former team at the TAT still going all out to tell Thais that, okay, you have the ability to travel elsewhere, but also travel within Thailand. And now it’s segmentation again. It’s not just Thais. You know, we can go after the supercar owners of Thailand. Okay. High-yield, right? We can go after the foodies, you know, food enthusiasts of Chiang Mai, of Phuket, of Isan. Okay, we can go after the other segments. There’s our stargazing clubs now, so on and so forth, and religious tourism. You know, people will always want this blessing for the year, something like that. There is segmentation now and ties have never been more important than they are now to the tourism industry.

I just wanted to quickly, on the regional side, how would you look at the importance of the neighboring countries, if it’s Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Malaysia?

Yeah, I’m a big proponent of overland travel. If we can do something like what’s happening in Europe or what has been happening in Europe, meaning you can drive anywhere, you know. across borders, and, you know, just then a lot of things happen. You extend your length of stay. You see more. You are able to reach the secondary destinations and the smaller towns by your own, where you spend, you know, through driving, through rail, through bus, whatever, okay? So overland travel, and it’s developing very quickly, Khun Jens. Right now, we are enjoying a consistent overland travel from Malaysia. Hopefully, as things develop, we will enjoy overland travel from Laos, from Myanmar, from Cambodia, and from Vietnam. Okay, we’re getting a certain number. We used to get a lot, but now we’re just re-establishing this link with Yunnan. So there’s people driving in, driving by, okay? And as the economies of these countries grow, it just contributes tourism. They will want to visit Thailand to buy things, to go to a spa, to do some sightseeing. Of course, they can travel within their countries, but we offer something different, a different culture, different value for money, so on and so forth. So yeah, as they grow, we grow.

That’s interesting. So, from where we’ve come from in the pandemic to where we are right now, tourism is bouncing back pretty strongly in Thailand. Thailand had a very good year in 2024. It looks like you may be on target in 2025 to at least match or perhaps surpass the numbers from 2019. What are the challenges ahead?

Oh, there’s a lot. There’s still plenty, I think. Of course, competition is intense. You know, no one is letting up. Consumers, they expect high quality. They expect safety. And I’m sorry to say safety is still an issue here, unfortunately. I think Thailand needs to shore up its safety measures and be better. And then there’s always why people travel, Khun Gary, is we just want to have fun. So we need to deliver on that experience consistently, okay? It’s everything from when you get off the plane until you get back on the plane again. So it needs to be really quite flawless when you deliver on something. It’s the service. It’s the food hygiene. It’s the ease of travel. It’s everything. So we need to be really on our toes all the time. It’s a buyer’s market, right? When you have money, you have time to travel. You can choose. You can go anywhere. So why come to Thailand? And when they choose to come, we need to deliver on the experience. And that is always a challenge. And we have so many, how would I say, so many actors in the country. TAT, as a marketer, we can only do so much. Then, of course, we hand off to people, to the provinces and so on. So everything must be perfect or rather near perfect. And everyone must be on board with this mindset.

The Thai tourism story, I think we can say is a success story. Of course, there are challenges, but it is a success story. What do you think other destinations can learn from Thailand? Other international destinations, maybe they’re mature, maybe they’re just developing their tourism. When they look at Thailand, you’re like, wow, Thailand doesn’t have that strong tourism brand. They have really strong arrival numbers. What would you say? You have learned that some of the things that maybe there’s some of the mistakes that Thailand has made that you would say like, okay, be careful with that or some of the things that they should be doing.

Well, we’ve had our ups and downs. Okay. I myself have been through the bird flu, the tsunami, coups, political disturbances, you know, what have you, everything. Okay. But every time we bounce back, sometimes, fast sometimes very slowly okay but we eventually bounce back one day a few years ago I had the same conversation with some of the business people and we were discussing why we bounce back you know it does it doesn’t look like we should be able to bounce back in many regards but we do bounce back every time and the answer was and it was what? It was we talked to each other all the time, Khun Jens. I mean, the government talks, communicates with the private sector and vice versa all the time through good and through bad times. Therefore, there’s an understanding of what is to be done, what is needed, you know, how we work with each other. I think communication is key. You know, a lot of times I… Again, not naming names. I see many governments, they do what they do, but they don’t talk to the stakeholders. Okay, this is the plan. You follow them. For many years, we did that too. You know, we did that too. And the result wasn’t outstanding. You know, so I guess whatever happens, Khun Jens, Khun Gary, there needs to be a constant stream of communication. Whether or not that… evolves into a campaign or a promotion or, you know, mega-events. I don’t know. Okay. But at least you’re talking to each other. You have a friendship or at least a relationship with each other. I mean, meaning B2B, G2G, B2G or whatever. Every segment of the tourism industry must know each other. So communication is at the core of building resilience. I have no doubt. No, I’m very committed to that.

Yeah. Good. I think this was a fascinating discussion. I think we could go on for hours talking about the Thai tourism story. And I think I know Gary and I, we have a lot more questions. Maybe we need to do another episode. In a few weeks or a few months down the road. But I think for today, I think this was great. And thank you so much, Khun Chattan. How many years have you been with TAT? 37.

Okay, I retired last year. But in a way, I’m still connected with TAT as a consultant. Right.

You can write a whole book about the Thai tourism story and your experience. I think it’ll get many people to sleep.

I think it’ll get many people to sleep. I would look forward to reading it personally.

It’s been a pleasure talking to you. Thank you so much for your insights and for joining us on the High-Yield Tourism Podcast.

Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you so much.