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Chinese travelers cancel Lunar New Year trips to Thailand over safety concerns

Chinese travelers are canceling plans to visit Thailand during the Lunar New Year holiday, as concerns over the kidnapping of actor Wang Xing continue to reverberate through the country.

Net booking volume for trips to Thailand fell 15.6% from Jan. 13 to Jan. 20 from the previous week, after news of the rescue of Wang from a scamming compound along the Thai-Myanmar border this month, according to the marketing agency China Trading Desk.

The fallout is also extending to other countries in Southeast Asia, with data from the aviation analytics company VariFlight showing Chinese travelers also canceled holiday trips to Vietnam, Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia — albeit to a lesser degree, according to the company's CEO, Subramania Bhatt.

"The biggest decline is in Thailand. The other Southeast Asian countries are, I would say, collateral damage," said Bhatt. "A lot of folks plan to travel around the region as a single trip … so some have cancelled trips that originate from these countries too."

During the same week in January, Chinese travelers booked more Lunar New Year trips to other destinations, including Australia (+4.8%), the United Arab Emirates (+4.7%) and South Korea (+3.9%), data showed.

Thailand posted an AI-generated video on the government's Facebook page last Wednesday of its prime minister attempting to reassure Chinese tourists that traveling to Thailand is safe. Days earlier, Chinese officials said they were prepared to work with Southeast Asian nations to crack down on cross-border scamming compounds, according to China's State Council.

Chinese travelers' reluctance to visit Southeast Asia may be benefitting other destinations, said Yang Lei, analyst at the Hong Kong-based financial services company China Galaxy

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