Thailand’s 60th Tourism Anniversary Turns to Nightmare as Longstanding Travel Agencies Start Closing

Thailand is starting to see the collapse of its inbound travel agencies as a result of the coronavirus, including two well-known names, Asia World Enterprise and CBS Travel Asia, which closed down on July 23 and August 1, respectively, after two decades in operation. What should have been a banner year celebrating the 60th anniversary of Thai tourism  is instead the industry's worst nightmare due to the pandemic. At the start of 2020, inbound agencies were in glee over the promise of 42 million foreign arrivals spending $77 billion. Now they are lucky if even eight million – an epic drop of 80 percent – can arrive in the kingdom in the next few months. “Asia World has had no business for the past four to five months and no income because of Covid-19,” said founder and managing director, Stephen McEvoy, in a note to staff. “It seems that tourists will not return to Thailand for a long time, which could be in 2021 or 2022, but nobody can be sure.” CBS Travel's let