Thai massage loses its charm behind masks
Walk into a massage parlour in Thailand and a familiar clasped-hands “wai” greeting will welcome you as a hint of jasmine lingers in the air. Less appealing is the smell of disinfectant and the squeaky sound of latex gloves.
Thai traditional massage is being forced to reinvent itself in the Covid-19 era, in which the human touch has barriers and masks hide the faces of therapists in a country known as the Land of Smiles. That has implications for both its appeal to customers, and its role as employer of last resort when other industries falter in
Southeast Asia’s second-biggest economy.
“This isn’t like any crisis we’ve ever seen,” said Wiboon Utsahajit, president of Siam Wellness Group Pcl, which owns about 70 massage shops and spas across Thailand. “We’ve had to change the way we operate. We’ve installed ultraviolet disinfection equipment in every room, and loaded up on health and cleaning supplies. The costs are higher and customers far fewer.” The survival of this industry matters in Thailand, where wellness tourism generated expenditures of $12 billion in 2017, more than the combined amounts in Indonesia and Malaysia, according a report by the Global Wellness Institute. About 530,000 Thais are directly employed in the sector, according to the Miami-based group. Those totals equate to 1.4% of Thailand’s workforce and 2.6% of annual GDP.
Massage shops were allowed to reopen last month under revised hygiene and social-distancing guidelines.