Originally Posted by
LIH Prem
Saw a news article stating that the Visa on arrival fee was set to double on Sept 27, from 1,000 THB to 2,000 THB.
This is obviously aimed at generating more revenue from the ~ 8 million (annual: 2015) Chinese tourists. (India is ~ 1 million visitors in 2015, so a heft bump there.)
I read that the average spend per stay (~ 3 days) is 1,000 baht per head for toursits from mainland China. (This excludes airfare and hotels obviously, those are included in the package that mainland operators sell, which are often heavily promoted buy one, get two or three free {hotel/transpo/food}.)
So this is really the only way for Thailand to generate additional revenue on this segment.
The extra 1,000 baht fee will be buried in the package price, but Thailand will get at least 2,000 baht per head now, so that will help prop up the economy.