Lights, camera, Covid – Tourism Ministry wants film crews to come to Thailand now

Without much luck with their ‘cunning ideas’ to draw back a few of the remaining world’s travellers, Thailand’s tourism officials are turning to the film industry to attract some people and investment. The Tourism and Sports Ministry is aiming to generate around 3 billion baht from foreign film crews and is targeting film projects with an investment over 100 million baht.

Foreign tourism revenue drastically dropped 83% in 2020, diving from nearly 40 million tourists in 2019 to only 6.7 million tourists in 2020, the vast majority of those visiting in the first 3 months of the year.

Anant Wongbenjarat, the tourism department’s director-general, says that Thailand welcomed 176 international film productions to the country last year, generating 1.73 billion baht. But this impressive number is a sharp decrease compared to 2019 when 740 foreign film crews generated 4.86 billion…