Where the sex tourists are coming from

The Year-end 2007 edition of the Bangkok Post's Economic Review has a spread on tourist arrivals. There are a couple of "interesting" comments:
"Statistics show that around half of all visitors are repeat travellers," {non sequitur conclusion} "a fact that points to the country's attractiveness as a tourist destination"

Actually the TAT isn't that focussed on visitor numbers

No sirree. Next year they're aiming for a more realistic 5% increase

In the first nine months tourist arrivals were up 4% - the target was 7.5%. Arrivals from China, Singapore and Malaysia were all down sharply (and you can bet many of those Malaysian non-arrivals were cross-border sex tourists in the South, to Hat Yai and other places nearby). Proportionately the French (23.54%) and the Australians (25.11%) were the biggest increase, followed by tourists from the Middle East (16.25%) and India (16.67%). American arrivals were flat - I guess we can hope for a decline next time. Oh, and to boygeenyus' dismay (I hope), Suvarnabhumi Airport gets slammed in a number of articles

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[kjun12]

Used it for the first time this year and cannot understand what all the bitching is about. It did not appear to be at all bad to me.

[Lunchtime O'Booze]

you haven't been here long have you ? :boxing:

I have been using the Suvarnabhumi Airport since it opened, and am another who has had very few problems. If you think lines are long and the walks are too far, then you are a spoiled traveler.

The lines here are MUCH less than in Hong Kong, Las Angles, Las Vegas, and San Francisco to name but a few, Hong Kong, with all their windows opened, had over 1-1/2 hours wait to enter the country. Macau was much the same.

The walks to various terminals at LAX make Bangkok look like a stroll in the park...and LAX has no moving sidewalks between terminals...you can walk or wait wait wait for s shuttle bus.

Anyway, I think you should enjoy the Suvarnabhumi Airport ... It could be much worse!

... that place is already falling down. Immigration lines, or the long walk from the gates to the baggage carousels (and v.v.) are just poor design for a modern airport. The lack of lavatories, the sub-standard building materials, the endless cobwebs, the cracked runways so some gates simply can't be used - there's a well-known list of infrastructure inadequacies that means that the airport isn't anytime soon going to attain its stated aim - "One of the Top Ten Airports in Asia". Those tourists passing through once in a blue moon probably don't notice such things, but the airport's main customers - the airlines and import/export agencies such as my company - are none too happy. Remember, it was never the original intention to reactivate Don Muang; Suvarnabhumi's inadequacies forced that on the AoT within a very few months of the new airport opening

[Lunchtime O'Booze]

how very Buddhist of them..at least the spiders have a good home. :munky2:

I've used Suvarnabhumi a number of times now, and I have to say I really have no complaints. I find the (spatial) design very beautiful, and I have had zero problems with queues or excessive walks. I much prefer it to Don Muang.

[krobbie]

On my last trip to Thailand the arrival was fine and they even had a wheeelchair at the plane for me in case I needed it (amputee - I didn't need the chair but took it all the same). Needless to say I went through customs/immigration quickly, quickly. Very nice.

On my departure, the cripples get called first but all that meant in actuality was, I went downstairs and on to a bus to the plane sitting far out from the airport proper. It would seem not enough air-bridges available. I thought that was pretty stink for a new airport. Just what someone with a prosthetic leg needs is lots of stairs ... NOT!

[ned kelly-old]

For what it's worth, HKG's Chek Lap Kok is widely lauded as one of the best.......however when it opened it had the same loud complaints about insufficient lavatories, poor baggage retrieval, long walks and insufficient air bridges. It still has long walks, and with the number of passengers and the size of planes very difficult to avoid, no matter what the design.

[Hmmm]

I have been using the Suvarnabhumi Airport since it opened, and am another who has had very few problems. If you think lines are long and the walks are too far, then you are a spoiled traveler.

The lines here are MUCH less than in Hong Kong, Las Angles, Las Vegas, and San Francisco to name but a few, Hong Kong, with all their windows opened, had over 1-1/2 hours wait to enter the country. Macau was much the same.

The walks to various terminals at LAX make Bangkok look like a stroll in the park...and LAX has no moving sidewalks between terminals...you can walk or wait wait wait for s shuttle bus.

Anyway, I think you should enjoy the Suvarnabhumi Airport ... It could be much worse!

Suvarnabhumi is a spectacular piece of architecture, but woefully dysfunctional for a NEW airport that was stretched to its limits from the day it opened.

Comparing it to LAX - one of the oldest and worst major airports in the western world - is not a legitimate comparison.

I haven't experienced long immigration delays at HKG, but hit them every time at Suvarnabhumi when the late evening jumbos arrive.

The arrivals hall and check-in halls at HKG are so much better designed than BKK. The BKK landside arrivals 'hall' (actually more like a corridor) is a disgrace.

While fortunately I spend more time in the airport lounges than at the gates, the gates have the same shocking 'barn-like' design as the oldest gates at Don Muang.

And how many departure bottlenecks can one airport have ? Immigration, concourse scanners, gate scanners / bag searches (presumably because the airlines don't trust AOT), gate check-in, air-bridge boarding pass check, ....

Surely airport design is mature enough now that you'd just copy what works elsewhere (Changi, HKG, etc) and leave out what doesn't. Granted Suvarnabhumi was designed by a Chicago firm, but it's not clear where the locals cut corners on the original design.