Thailand's international receipts reached ฿1.54 trillion in 2025 — falling slower than arrivals, so yield per visitor rose to ฿47,686. Bangkok holds the largest share, and national policy has formally switched from counting heads to counting wallets.
International visitors spent ฿1.54 trillion in Thailand in 2025 — down 4.7% on volume's 7.2% fall, meaning yield per arrival actually rose. Accommodation takes the largest line (35%, ฿555bn), then food and drink (21.6%) and shopping (18.2%). Bangkok captures the largest urban share of all of it — ฿1.2 trillion in visitor expenditure in the last measured year, roughly 18% of the capital-region economy.
By passport, China still leads the revenue table (฿249.9bn) despite falling a third; Russia (฿113.9bn, +9.8%), India (฿93.9bn, +22.6%) and the UK (฿74.5bn, +21.7%) are the growth wallets. The pattern is the strategy: fewer arrivals, more money per arrival.
The Tourism Authority has formally abandoned the volume race: targets now chase US$2,400 per trip (from ~$1,500), marketed through wellness, medical travel, sport and the concert calendar. The visa-free experiment has been tightened in parallel — Thailand is choosing yield over headcount as national policy.
Domestic tourism is the quiet ballast: 202 million Thai trips generating ฿1.17 trillion, up 3.7% — a floor no other city in this series has. Combined with the Suvarnabhumi expansion and the park-frontage hotel cycle, the money flow story is a re-tiering, not a retreat: Bangkok is trading its backpacker surplus for suite nights, and the 2025 receipts mix says the trade is working.
Subscribe to the digest and receive key market signals every two weeks.