The Tourism Authority of Thailand is expecting that country’s upcoming Songkran festival will generate more tourism revenue than it did last year, despite projections that the March 28 earthquake has dampened tourist arrivals to the kingdom. The 7.7-magnitude earthquake, which epicentered in neighboring Myanmar, caused a building under construction near Bangkok’s famous Chatuchak market to collapse, raising questions about the safety of Thailand’s high-rise architecture. Still, Thailand’s tourism authority, in a press release published Thursday, said that the multi-day festival event in mid-April — the country’s biggest — will generate 26.5 billion Thai baht ($763 million) in tourism revenue, an increase of 8% year on year. Of that, an estimated 7.3 billion baht will come from some 476,000 international arrivals, according to the release. Thailand’s tourism ministry also doubled down on its 2025 foreign arrival forecast, with some 38 million visitors expected to arrive this year, according to Reuters. The country’s minister of tourism and sports said that while more than 1,000 hotel rooms were canceled in the immediate aftermath of the quake, the impact of the natural disaster on tourism is expected to be short term in nature, according to the report.
However, the Thai Hotels Association said it expects the earthquake will affect
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