by Mia Taylor
Last updated: 2:38 PM ET, Fri April 26, 2019
This year is getting off to a rocky start for Thailand's tourism industry.
Bloomberg has just reported that the Southeast Asian country suffered a drop in both tourist arrivals and spending for March.
Visitors numbers fell to 3.5 million, which is a 0.7 decline from one year ago, according to Bloomberg data. At the same time, foreign tourist receipts trended downward 1.3 percent to about $5.8 billion.
This is no small shift for a country that is Southeast Asia's second-largest economy and a place where tourism is critical, accounting for as much as one-fifth of the economy.
In the wake of the news, Thailand's government has taken a variety of measures to spur a rebound, including waving visa fees to lure travelers, Bloomberg reported.
The country's tourism report comes on the heels of news earlier this week showing a significant decline in exports, another key economic engine for Thailand.
It also follows news earlier in April that the popular Chiang Mai region is suffering from troubling air pollution. The seasonal haze hovering over the tourist hotspot has been particularly bad and prolonged this year, shrouding the region's famed mountains and triggering the closure of many schools.
Pollution levels in early April reached the hazardous zone and remained there for many weeks, according to an Associated Press report at the time, which noted that Chiang Mai is now at the top of the list of the world's most polluted cities on many days.
As for the recent news of dropping tourist arrivals, officials are saying such fluctuations are not entirely unusual.
"If the tourism arrivals and receipts continue to slide, it could be an added risk to the economy because the sector is one of the main drivers," Duangrat Prajaksilpthai, an economist at TMB Bank Pcl in Bangkok, told Bloomberg. "The numbers usually fluctuate and could bounce back, so we have to wait and see."
The country's Finance Minister, Apisak Tantivorawong, has said that economic growth could slow to the low 3 percent range in the first and second quarters.
Much of the country's tourism boom is driven by Chinese travelers. But even on this front, numbers have been declining for the past few months, according to Bloomberg.
As a silver lining, the number of visitors from India has increased substantially, by 35 percent.
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