Our Director of Operations and Tours, April is currently in Thailand to attend a travel and tourism conference. Here she tells us about how the coup has affected her trip (spoiler: it hasn’t) and why the curfew is just fine with her…
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I arrived in Bangkok yesterday to attend the Thailand Travel Mart conference which the Tourism Authority of Thailand sponsored (thank you TAT!) About a week before my travels, Thailand’s military announced that martial law would be going into affect and shortly after the coup was official.
As the conference takes place in Bangkok we received an official letter from the TAT announcing that the conference would still take place as there were no safety concerns for those traveling to Bangkok. This wasn’t news to me as our team on the ground had been keeping us informed about the ongoing situation, but as I was heading to Bangkok on my own I was curious how/if the coup would affect my trip. I have been in Bangkok for one day now and the most I’ve experienced first hand regarding the coup is the emails from my family and friends and our guests with news reports.
I was particularly interested in the articles about locals who have taken up the three finger salute from the Hunger Games series. I am reading the books with my son and so I happen to have Mockingjay with me to read on this trip. As a result I’ve been keeping my eyes open hoping to see the salute, but the reality is, there are little to no signs of any resistance, protests, coup or even military presence in the city. And I’ve really been looking !
There are a few protesters camped in Lumphini Park, but if I didn’t know they were protesters because of reports, I would have just assumed they were squatters. The biggest change to my trip is that I had to move one dinner up an hour to accommodate the midnight curfew, and really I was happy to do it as midnight is past my bedtime!
So that’s my on the ground report of the situation in Bangkok due to the coup. Which is really nothing. I’m on the shuttle to the Thailand Travel Mart conference now to reconnect with managers of many of our signature properties and connect with managers of new hotels. I really enjoy this conference as it’s an efficient way to have a lot of hotel meetings (think speed dating for hotel managers and travel agents) and strengthen our relationships to better improve the service for our JW guests! After the conference I’m off to Samui and Phuket where there is no longer any curfew, but I let’s be honest, I’ll be asleep long before midnight anyway so the curfew being lifted won’t change my trip too much 😉