Thai government seeks to boost budget tourism. Hotel industry moves to block it

I hear stories from friends and business owners here in Thailand about how the tourism scene is something that has changed quite a lot over the past 10 years. Covid crisis aside, they say that Thailand used to be filled constantly with budget backpackers and some people loved having them here, others though they were a blemish to the tourism industry.

Regardless of how people felt about how the backpackers behaved while they were here, there was no denying that they were still spending money, albeit a lot less than the people that were here for a 5 day vacation.

According to my friends who have been here for ages, the backpacking industry was under attack by the government for many years including denial of visas, increasing the restrictions on what kind of place is allowed to provide lodging, and simply pricing them out of the market. This saw an entire area of Chiang Mai become a ghost town when it had previously been the mainstay for backpackers in the city. I presume this also happened in other parts of the country as well.

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Cheap hostels aren't really where I would prefer to stay. Of course I would rather stay in a luxury hotel and the people staying in guesthouses and hostels would likely say the same thing. The difference is based almost entirely in cost and probably to a lessor degree, the ability to meet and become friends with other backpackers.

According to my friend who used to own a guesthouse, the process 10 years ago was relatively simple to open but then a ton of red tape started being slowly introduced. More and more regulations kept being put into place until it became too much of a hassle to keep the place open so he simply closed it. These regulations were things like how many people could stay and how many rooms a place could have before it would no longer be considered a "homestay" and would fall into the "hotel" category. Once you enter the hotel category the barriers to entry are absurd and impossible for a very small place to possibly adhere to. Things like automatic fire suppression systems and fire-escape ladders would be required to even apply for the license. Then, even if you did do these things it would be left up to an officer about whether or not the license would be approved and according to my friend, these officials are paid by the gigantic hotels to not allow the licenses for one reason or another.

At one point in time Thailand toyed with the idea, and actually implemented it for a while, that people were not allowed to AirBnB their own residences. They claimed this reason or that but you didn't have to look very hard to realize that that real reason was that the hotel cooperatives didn't like having their profits "stolen" by the little guy.

Recently the Thai government, who is behaving very nicely towards regular people lately, proposed some changes to the accommodation rules of the country

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What this would do would be to increase the amount of guests that could stay somewhere to 30 and also increase the amount of rooms to 10. This is up from 20 guests in 4 rooms which was obviously some sort of method of somewhat accommodating "dorm room" operations, which is something that the hotel industry never tried to get involved in anyway since it is purely a backpacker thing.

The hotel industry burst into motion to oppose this proposed new ruling stating things like "safety issues" for the guests but I don't think you need to be a skeptic like me to see what is really going on here. The hotel industry doesn't give a damn about a budget traveler's safety, they just don't like competition that is cheaper than they are.

The co-op even references as far back as the 2004 Tsunami claiming that the reason why so many of the injured and deceased were able to be reunited with their families is because of the stringent check-in process that exists at hotels.

What a bunch of crap!

I hope that the government goes through with this proposal to allow more homestays because I feel as though Thailand has lost a lot of its charm when they started to try to make everything more upmarket. The budget travelers don't really come here anymore and once again, according to my friends who have been here longer than I have, this is something that has been diminishing for a decade or so and it is explicitly because of regulations that this is the case.

I just really don't like the idea that the "big guys" don't want regular folks to have the opportunity to have their own business because it could potentially cut into their profits. Then they pretend as though they are concerned about safety when we can all see right through that. No doubt they will buy off some officials to block the passing of this new legislation but Thailand is a bit of a tinderbox as far as the rich vs. poor are concerned. The rich would prefer that everyone else just has no choice but to come work for them for slave wages rather than give them a chance to start their own enterprise.