Box 1 Leisure and Theme Parks in Thailand

In the last decade, amusement and theme parks have played an important role in urban life. Economic and social pressure has heightened the need for relaxation. Leisure and theme parks which are located near cities are convenient substitutes for distant tourist resorts.

At present, Thailand has more than 20 leisure and theme parks, 17 of which are members of the Thai Amusement and Leisure Parks Association (TAPA). They can be divided by subthemes as follows:

• historical and cultural parks; such as the wax museum, the Ancient City, Miniature City, etc.
• Nature or wildlife-based parks; such as Safari World, Crocodile Farm, etc.
• Fantasy and Technology based; such as Dream World, Suan Siam, etc.

At present, most of the leisure and theme parks are scattered around Bangkok and adjacent provinces. A TDRI survey revealed that the number of visitors to these parks could reach 20 million persons per year.

About 40 percent of visitors to the larger parks are foreign tourists, each spending on average about 400 baht per person per day in the parks. A conservative estimate of the gross income of all parks is about 3,000 million baht per year. Services in some of these parks could be considered the best in Asia.