Picture: Daily News
In a startling U-turn the Thai cabinet yesterday decided to cancel Tuesday July 27th as a nationwide public holiday.
This will result in many people having to seek travel and hotel refunds.
The original plan was to have a five day holiday from 24th to 28th July inclusive encompassing Buddhist holidays, a replacement day and HM King’s birthday on July 28th.
So Tuesday 27th was added to make it a long Saturday through Wednesday break to encourage travel and stimulate the economy.
Yesterday government deputy spokeswoman Ratchada Thanadirek said that the Covid-19 situation has changed all that.
Now the government doesn’t want people to travel so they have cancelled the holiday.
She said that the government is urging those in the state and private sector to give refunds for travel and hotel packages that would need to be cancelled. They asked for cooperation.
Thaivisa notes that this will come as a major blow to the tourism industry that was banking on revenue from the long holiday.
In recent days tourism officials in Trat, for example, said they were banking on big money from the five day break in Koh Chang.
The announcement also comes after the government faced huge criticism for the badly bungled late hour announcement of the closure of construction sites in Bangkok at the weekend.
Thousands of workers got wind of the impending closure of the sites and took off to the countryside amid fears that would only exacerbate the spread of the virus.
Noticeably yesterday Ratchada was left to fend for herself with no major figure in the government facing the press over this U-turn, as reported by Daily News yesterday.
(Source: – Thai Visa)