The former Prime Minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, is now supporting some of the protesters. The protesters mainly plan to do rally at Friday in Bangkok through which they will offer to force present government bodies to call fresh elections. The protesters are expecting that their protest would go for some other days, and government would be warned of probable violence.
Approximately thirty countries have already issued the travel advisories and they have already been warned about their citizens living or visiting in Thailand. That is how they could avoid the large gatherings or probable clashes. The economist of Chulalongkorn University of Bangkok, Sompob Manarangsan, says that the travel industries and the banking institutions are possibly the first suffers who are going to endure if the aggression breaks out. Sompob said “The first one is tourism. Both domestic tourism and also the tourism from outside the country is going to be highly affected by this kind of situation and then also the financial sector.”
In the year of 2009, Thailand got more that 14 million visitors who have contributed around 6% of their economy. The Anti-government bodies protest in last April which turned aggressive and scaring for what they lost some of the potential visitors. Again in the year of 2008, another team of strikers overran major international airports as well as shut down the flights for several weeks. Hundreds of the foreign tourists were hanged in the country as well as many of them could not complete their planned trips. The spokesman for “Pacific Asia Travel Association,” John Koldowski, says that the travelers are now nervous about political tension. He said “It is going to be tense and unfortunately one of the things that’s happened now is that all it takes is to leak the word that something is going to happen and we get this sort of reaction straight up … the shear thought that it might is enough to get people scrambling,” he said.
He also added “No question of that. It’s actually been through the ringer several times over the last 12 to 18 months and everyone’s hoping that this is not yet another turn of the screw so to speak, [Hotel] rates are down, participation levels are down.”
