Above; Pattaya Sep. 2020 without foreign and domestic tourists.
video credit: Pattaya News.

Business owners warn of a near total collapse of the restaurant, bar, shopping and hospitality industry in the city that goes well beyond the “red light” aspect but is now starting to effect nearly every other business in the city from transportation, to tours, to bus companies, to attractions like the waterparks and cabarets to grocery stores, to food vendors, to shopping malls to real estate and landlords. Barbershops on Soi buakhao are shuttered, many 7-11’s, Mcdonalds and Burger Kings have shut with no foreign tourists, many of the massage shops in the city have closed. Language schools and cooking schools that catered to tourists and foreigners are shuttered. Even hospitals, beauty clinics and dentists, who depend heavily on medical tourism and foreigners getting dental work done in Pattaya, are struggling across the city. Tens of thousands of people are already estimated to be unemployed or have left the city and returned to their home province.

Behind closed doors, business owners and economists are engaged in furious debates with health officials over allowing foreign tourists back to the once tourist mecca. Doctors argue that letting in foreign tourists, even carefully, may start another round of infections causing the government to lock-down and shutter the entire country for several months again, causing even more economic damage country wide. The business owners and experts argue that staying closed for what they suggest for six months will see irreparable damage to the tourism infrastructure and industry for the entire country that could take a decade or more to recover if ever. 

For now, all the business owners can do is wait and hope that over the next several months the situation improves. If there is one thing they agree upon it is that the city simply cannot “survive” with the current 'new ab-normal',

An owner of a beer bar, said she has been in the industry for twenty years and although it has had its ups and downs she has never seen anything as bad as this current situation. she also suggests that the current “midnight closure order” which is part of the Emergency Decree is scrapped as many of her customers want to come later. She also wants to see the promised festivals and events to draw traffic to Pattaya that were discussed by city officials.

An owner of a  small souvenir shop on Walking Street, said that although most landlords have been understanding of the situation, many of them are also running into financial trouble.

Another business owner told associated reporters

“What good is it that I am safe from this virus that about 99% of people survive if I cannot eat and have no home and no way to take care of my family?”

An opinion shared by thousands in the tourism sector who've had their lives turned upside down, now struggling to make ends meet, due to the persistant coronvirus pandemic situation and ensuing emergency decree.