Thursday, October 16, 2008: With many hotels seeing an average of 50% occupancy for the first nine months of the year, Pattaya hotel operators have predicted that full year figures will see a 20% dip in occupancy, reports a local paper.
Many hotel operators feel like they are being hit twice this year, with global economic uncertainty seeing numbers drop around the world, then Thailand specifically with global unrest, reports The Bangkok Post.
Rungthip Suksrikarn, Sunbeam Hotel in Pattaya VP adds, “We are losing out because of our internal conflicts. Everybody here feels hopeless and we expect an even harder time in the second quarter of next year when the world economic recession bottoms out.”
Ms Rungthip adds that Sunbeam has been hit especially hard, and expects a 20% occupancy rate for the month of October.
Many North Asian source markets, such as Japan and Korea were cancelling stays, not only hit hard by world economic pressures but also due to being culturally more sensitive to political unrest.
While it appears that Russians have proven to be the market with the most resilience in times of political uncertainty.
