Naturism in Thailand resumes to 40 percent pre-Covid growth rates

Naturist resorts in Thailand have bounced back to the pre-Covid growth rates of 40 percent increase year-on-year. The year 2023 ended on 13.500 room nights sold - 40 percent above the room nights sold in 2019 which was the last normal year before the pandemic.

Naturism was Thailand's fastest growing tourism segment during the years 2016 to 2019, expanding from a mere 2.774 rooms in 2016 to close to 10.000 rooms sold in 2019. The record of 13.500 rooms last year includes both the five naturist resorts that are business partners of Naturist Association Thailand as well as an estimate of the two resorts that are currently not business partners of the association. The business partner resorts alone reached 90 percent of the 2019 level.

Naturist Association Thailand started measuring the growth of the sector in 2016. Since then, the total number of room nights have been expanding faster than any other tourism sector in Thailand.

Total room nights in 2016 were 2.774 rooms. In 2017 it expanded 75 percent to 4.813 room nights. In 2018 it expanded further to 7.090 room nights. The number of room nights recorded in 2019 was 9.974 rooms sold. The movement lost three naturist resorts due to the pandemic.

Naturist Association Thailand participated in the spring 2019 in the Thai Tieaw Thai tourism exhibition in Bangkok. The purpose was among others to network with the Tourism Authority of Thailand regions also present at the exhibition to ask for their help in locating potential resorts in their region or province that might be suitable for changing market to being a naturist resort.

Prospective resorts would typically be small to media resorts, located relatively isolated from the mainstream tourism areas and suffering from the current downward trend for European, American and Australian tourists.

Currently, the naturist association is working with three unrelated prospective Chinese developers in finding suitable locations for new naturist resorts in expectation of a fast growth in naturist tourism from China to Thailand in the next few years.