to so-called ‘high value’ tourists has been accompanied by a halving of the visa-free entry allowance to 30 days, affecting visitors from 93 countries, and a crackdown on foreigners illegitimately running businesses in the kingdom. This is a real eye-opener to Thais in the retail and hospitality industries, since millions depend on tourism for their livelihoods. Every retailer has a pony in the tourism race, from the large, sophisticated supermarket, apparel, and home-improvement chains to the humble street food vendors, and everything in between. How must they adapt? Government to riff-raff: ‘Stay away!’ The warning shots were fired a long time ago. Prominent politicians, including the current prime minister, have long grumbled that the country isn’t getting enough value out of the tens of millions of international visitors it hosts every year. They are also fed up with what they regard as the crass behaviour and skinflint spending habits of a good number of them, which was aggravated by the now-dead recreational cannabis boom from post-2023. The government wants to reshape the amount of money that tourists spend, the kinds of things they spend it on, and the way they disport themselves while they are doing it. In particular, they want to tie the tourism spending more closely to cultural and environmental experiences, and less to activities associated with boozing and loafing on beaches. This, of course, would have a meaningful effect on the nation’s retailers. How retailers adapt will be crucial to their success. Seven things retailers need to know Let’s suspend our scepticism for a moment and assume that the strategy works, and the country attracts more of the high-spending kind of tourist. There are a number of key things for retailers to take note of: 1. Merchandising should be tied as much as possible to Thai culture and design: The kind of tourist the government is trying to attract will not be interested in baseball cap/graphic T-shirt souvenirs. They will be interested in things they can’t get anywhere outside of Thailand that embody genuine and lasting value. Silk, gemstones, leather goods, beauty products (especially skincare), ceramics, unique artisanal products, apparel from Thai designers, and high-end cuisine experiences are the kinds of things they’ll be after. 2. Location preferences: Everyone loves a good street market and venues like Chatuchak in Bangkok will hold their attraction because of the breathtaking variety of merchandise available. Likewise, regional markets that highlight local craftsmanship and styles will be just as popular as always (for example, the markets in Chiang Mai that bring together products handcrafted by hill tribe people). However, in Bangkok and the large provincial cities, genuinely high-end merchandise will be the preserve of the high-end malls. These include Em District, IconSiam, Siam Discovery, Siam Paragon, One Bangkok and Dusit Central Park, all of which blend international brands with Thai designers. At all of these malls, pop-ups for local designers are prominent and will be relied upon heavily to draw tourists looking for the unique. 3. Experiential retail will be crucial: Experiences are what Thailand specialises in and the aforementioned malls and markets are going all-out to bring experiences to tourists with money to spend. For the retailers themselves, immersive store designs, product displays and the staff themselves, need to be outstanding. Foreign language capability, especially in English, Chinese and Japanese, will be mandatory, along with product knowledge. Thai retailers currently don’t score well in these departments. 4. Emphasis on wellness: Part of Thailand’s pitch to the high-end tourist is its attraction as a luxury health and beauty hub. The country has advanced facilities for aesthetic treatments (Thais themselves have an unusually high appetite for rearranging and fine-tuning their body parts), an overall good health and hospital system, a thriving beauty products industry (T-beauty) and, last but not least, the best traditional therapies that money can buy. Associating merchandise with health and wellbeing will be a useful strategy. 5. Mid-market retailers won’t miss out if they curate well for the high-end tourist: The emphasis on ‘high-value’ tourists need not be tied exclusively to the luxury retail segment. Mid-market retailers that curate their assortments well can also benefit. For example, supermarket and hypermarket chains that stock imported items in select tourist markets or set aside parts of their stores for tourist needs will benefit from the government’s strategy. See, for example, what the Villa Market and Tops supermarket chains already do or the Big C’s store reorganisation in downtown Bangkok. 6. The Thai cuisine experience: The local food experience will be even more elevated in importance, with quality the key. This applies both to stand-alone restaurants and dining integrated into retail stores. Too often, Thai restaurants in tourist locations make one or more of three mistakes: They dumb down their recipes, thinking tourists don’t want authenticity; they create unwanted fusions with foreign cuisines; or they use inputs of poor quality that may be acceptable to locals but not to foreigners. 7. Payment systems have to get better: To accommodate high-value tourists, Thai retailers will need to improve their payment systems with regard to acceptance of foreign credit cards, digital wallets, and bank QR payments. The country’s largest retail chain by store count is 7-Eleven, and the majority of its stores don’t yet even accept QR payments for domestic banks, let alone foreign ones. And outside of the large chains, Thai retailers don’t offer VAT refunds, which are handled mainly at international airports. But will it bring lasting change? The new tourism marketing strategy is particularly interesting because it takes a leaf out of the longstanding immigration playbook: Countries try to attract skilled migrants who will make a solid economic contribution and become upstanding citizens in their new country. Now, Thailand has extended that to tourism as well, although it has a strange way of announcing it. Dubbed “Amazing Thailand Grand Sale 2026”, the pivot toward ‘high-value’ international tourists was announced in late June, and it leaves no stone unturned when it comes to promoting Thai retailers and Thai experiences. The campaign will go until the end of August and the Tourism Authority of Thailand’s economic modellers estimate it will generate 700 million baht (US$22 million) in revenue, which is a very modest gain, even if it is achievable. The campaign’s strategy emphasises local Thai brands over discounting, touting their craftsmanship, and association with Thai culture. It also offers sweeteners for spending a minimum amount of money, including entry into a lottery for prizes such as an electric vehicle, luxury holiday packages, and other goodies that promote Thai designers. Thailand’s leading retail and shopping mall companies, including Central Retail, Big C, Siam Piwat and CP Axtra are collaborating on the promotion. Will it work though? Among the problems for Thailand in making this stick for longer-term structural change in its tourism profile is one of its own making. People will go on vacation where they expect to have fun, and so the country will continue to have immense appeal to the mass tourism market. Another obstacle is the country’s own tourism infrastructure, which is developing but still very shabby in most places outside central Bangkok. Internal flight connections are patchy and ground transport laborious because of a poor rail network and treacherous, congested roads. Accommodation quality is short of world-class standards and knowledge of foreign languages by those staffing accommodation is poor outside of Greater Bangkok. Thus, it requires time and effort to go places, and you’re never sure of what you’ll get when you arrive. These are big disadvantages if you are trying to attract tourists who are money-rich and time-poor. Mass-market tourists have a much higher tolerance for such inconveniences and this has kept Thailand among the leading countries for international arrivals. However, the country has still struggled to get the number of international visitors up to pre-Covid levels, a target that by 2023 was thought to be pretty much in the bag. It didn’t happen. Arrivals dropped by a further 7 per cent in 2025, and the tourism authorities have not issued an optimistic forecast for 2026 either. Retailers and restaurateurs have become increasingly agitated and have been urging the government to do something about it, but things have become more competitive at the mass-market end, as tourism to neighbouring countries like Malaysia and Vietnam has been picking up. Japan wants high-value tourists, too Thailand is, by no means, the only country that is seeking high-value tourists. A foreign policy conflict between China and Japan over Taiwan is now entering its tenth month, and Chinese tourists have largely obeyed their government’s directive to avoid Japan like the plague. This was a big blow to the luxury end of Japanese retail, including the department stores that generated a large share of their revenues from duty-free sales in their major urban stores. The number of Chinese tourists visiting Japan has plunged by more than 50 per cent so far this year, but the weak Japanese yen helped the country attract free spenders from other places, particularly Korea and Southeast Asia. The retailers also switched their marketing strategy away from the traditional focus on China by using country-specific social-media platforms and, like Thailand, elevating the emphasis on experiential retail and the ‘Japan-ness’, or cultural distinctness, of their merchandise. High-end department stores like Takashimaya have largely maintained their level of duty-free sales at most of their big stores. But while Japan has managed change well, at least so far, Thailand is still a work in progress. One thing is for sure though, if you think you might be riff- raff, you’re better off staying at home. This story first appeared in the August 2026 issue of Inside Retail Asia magazine.