Thailand’s Year Is Down. The Latest Week Rose.

Thailand is about a million visitors behind the same point last year. The week of October 11–17 rose anyway.

From January 1 through October 17, 24.42 million foreign visitors arrived, down 4.12 percent from those dates in 2025. Surasak Phancharoenworakul, the tourism and sports minister, released the preliminary count on October 19. Twenty-four million people have still come.

They spent 1.19 trillion baht over the same stretch, roughly $35 billion at about 33.7 baht to the dollar. He published the amount. A comparison with last year’s spending is not in the update, so the decline we can see is in the number of people.

The latest week’s lift came from the longer flights.

October 11–17 brought 487,410 people, 4,035 more than the week before. That is about 70,000 people a day. Long-haul arrivals rose 10.55 percent, to 178,479, which Surasak tied to short school breaks in Europe and the Americas. Short-haul arrivals fell 4 percent, to 308,931, after China’s Golden Week ended.

China was still the largest group that week, 65,270 people, down 16.6 percent from the week before. The holiday wave had left. For the year China is still first, at 4.14 million, and South Korea is fifth, at about 896,000.

The United States was fifth for those seven days only: 18,084 people, up 8.2 percent, after ranking seventh the week before. Russia was fourth, at 27,888, up 8.3 percent. Winter showed up from more than one long-haul market. Malaysia rose too. Surasak tied part of that rise to Hat Yai’s vegetarian festival, which fell in the week already counted.

Surasak expected October 18–24 to come in higher, on school holidays in the long-haul markets and the start of winter. Today is the 23rd. This is that week, and the count for it has not been published.

China’s holiday week has already eased. A winter flight from the United States belongs with last week’s long-haul rise. Put the reservation on the days you are actually traveling.