HOLIDAYS
is still alcohol consumption, another factor, according to research done by a team from Thammasat University, is recklessness on the part of tourists. For a project called ‘‘Tourist Satisfaction and Travel Behaviour of Safe Journeys for Foreign Tourists’’, the researchers polled 800 people (tourists, service providers and officials) in six popular tourist destinations including Bangkok, Chiang Mai and Phuket. They found that the majority of tourists rode motorbikes without having a driving licence and with little or no driving experience.
‘‘Some tourists have never driven motorcycles in their lives, but they rent motorbikes here to look around on,’’ said Assoc Prof Pawinee Iamtrakul, assistant dean of the Faculty of Architecture and Planning at Thammasat.
One of the reasons for this is that motorbike-hire shops take advantage of a loophole in the law and only require tourists to show their passport rather than a driving licence, Dr Pawinee explained.
The survey found that 64.5% of tourist drivers did not have international driving licences, 65% were unfamiliar with Thai rules of the road and 70% were unaware of the penalties for breaking traffic laws here. Almost half of those polled said they would drink and drive and would have no compunction about exceeding the speed limit. About 59% of them said they do not use seatbelts and 58% do not wear helmets. About one-fifth of tourists polled did not have travel insurance.
About 33% of tour agents were found not to pay travel insurance for tourists in their charge. In addition, one-third of local service providers do not carry out regular maintenance on vehicles used for ferrying tourists around.
More than half of the tourists polled felt that road-safety standards in Thailand were lower than in their home countries for every mode of land transportation.
Other concerns were that traffic-law enforcement here is far from stringent and that when tourists have an accident, they do not know whom or how to ask for help.
‘‘Visitors do not know what number to ring in an emergency,’’ Dr Pawinee said, adding that the police’s 191 callcentre number is often hard to get through to, anyway.
It might be useful if there was one centre to take care of road-safety issues for tourists while road-safety policy should be made part of any national tourism policy, she added.
Tourists should be given safety guidelines and emergency numbers when they do online searches for travel information about Thailand, she said, adding that the Tourism Authority of Thailand should consider putting such information on the front page of its website.
According to Tourism and Sports Minister Somsak Pureesrisak, tourist safety is one of his top priorities since it affects the confidence of foreign visitors in travelling freely around this country.
‘‘The principal thing is not to have any crime. But if there is wrongdoing, assistance should be offered as quickly as possible,’’ he said, making the point that taking care of tourists involved in unfortunate incidents was as important as preventing such incidents in the first place; his reasoning was that while physical injuries can usually be healed, mental trauma is harder to recover from.
The minister cited the case of a speedboat crash in Pattaya in which three Korean visitors, including a child, were injured. One of the victims, who worked as a taxi driver in his home town, lost a leg as a result of the accident.
‘‘His wife cried hopelessly when I went to visit them. It was truly our fault so, as a representative of the Thai government, I went to the hospital [in Pattaya] to make an official apology,’’ he said
‘‘A lesson has been learned and we must not let this sort of thing happen again. It is unacceptable that those offering speed boats for hire in such a wellknown tourist destination as Pattaya do not have to adhere to any safety standards,’’ Somsak said, adding this was just one among many issues related to tourist safety that need to be addressed.
A memorandum of understanding is soon to be signed, opening the way for the establishment of a special court of law to try offences involving tourists, he noted, adding: ‘‘We will try to tighten up all the judicial processes.’’
As Thailand’s economic growth depends on the growth of its tourism industry, the minister said, it is an absolute must for all parties concerned to make the security issue a national priority.