The President of the Thai Hotels Association has called for the country’s first entertainment complexes with casinos to be developed outside of existing tourist hotspots in order to help drive visitation to secondary cities.
According to a report by The Nation, Thienprasit Chaiyapatranun was speaking at a roundtable session hosted by Thai-language newspaper Krungthep Turakij on Wednesday where he discussed concerns around overtourism should entertainment complexes be built in places like Phuket and Pattaya.
Specifically, he pointed to existing concerns in those areas around traffic congestion and resource shortages, specifically water scarcity in Pattaya in the summer.
“Tourist attractions like Universal Studios theme parks are located outside major cities and there are no casinos there,” he said, seemingly overlooking the Singapore example at Resorts World Sentosa.
Thienprasit expressed his belief that, if entertainment complexes are to be built in places like Bangkok, Phuket, Chiang Mai and Pattaya – the four locations recently named by the government – they should be subject to a public referendum.
However, he added that such complexes in secondary cities would benefit tourism by encouraging visitors to explore new locations.
