Pattaya hotels take food to the streets in bid to survive
Pattaya’s hotels are taking their restaurants to the streets by offering food stalls outside and delivery in a bid to save their businesses during the Covid-19 pandemic. Such changes in their attempts to avoid closing, come as city officials say they will use funds to spruce up the city for Chinese New Years on February 12.
As Chonburi province is still declared as a “high-risk” and “highly-controlled” area, all hopes of domestic and foreign tourism have been dashed as visitors are essentially banned. Even with recent virus infections down to just 1 over the past 3 days and single digits in the last week, the strict measures have not been lifted.
After Covid hit, hotels in Pattaya relied more on domestic tourists, which appeared to be working for several months after the city held more outdoor festivals to increase tourism traffic. Now, without domestic tourists helping to curb the financial downfall, the hotel industry has met many times with province leaders and represetatives from the Social Security Office of Thailand to ask for a forced legal closure which would allow their formal staff to get paid through social security benefits at roughly 50% of their daily wages.
The requests so far have been denied, leaving 30,000 hotel workers in Pattaya alone out of a job. Some hotels have managed to keep their employees and even providing meals and lodging for them. But smaller hotels have run out of money and are having to lay off staff without pay.
