{"id":299442,"date":"2026-02-15T14:23:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-15T14:23:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/299442\/"},"modified":"2026-02-15T14:23:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-15T14:23:08","slug":"southeast-asias-2nd-largest-economy-dismisses-claims-of-escalating-travel-costs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/299442\/","title":{"rendered":"Southeast Asia&#8217;s 2nd largest economy dismisses claims of escalating travel costs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"Normal\">Thailand&#8217;s strengthening baht has appreciated by roughly 1% against the U.S. dollar so far this year, following a 9% surge in 2025, a trend that risks eroding the tourism sector&#8217;s price competitiveness, Bangkok Post reported.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Normal\">Thailand\u2019s headline inflation was negative for \u200ca 10th straight month in January, driven by lower energy prices, data from the commerce ministry showed.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Normal\">Tourism officials affirmed Thailand remained a low-cost destination for foreign tourists.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Normal\">Thailand has set its target of welcoming 36.7 million foreign arrivals this year, a 13% increase from last year, and earning tourism revenue of 2.78 trillion baht (US$88.3 billion), up 7%.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Normal\">With 32.9 million international arrivals in 2025, Thailand ranked as Southeast Asia&#8217;s second most visited country after Malaysia, which received over 42 million, marking the second consecutive year the kingdom has relinquished its regional tourism crown.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Normal\">The country recorded 4.1 million foreign arrivals from Jan. 1 to Feb. 8, down 10.77%.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Thailand&#8217;s strengthening baht has appreciated by roughly 1% against the U.S. dollar so far this year, following a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":299443,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[72,113,61,60,17759],"class_list":["post-299442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-southeast-asia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=299442"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299442\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/299443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}