It now seems that, during the first five months of 2010, there has been an increase in interest in Thailand, or at least as far as Australians are concerned. Apparently there has been an increase of 18 percent in the number of Australians visiting Thailand when compared to last year.

When not including Thailand’s immediate Asian neighbors, Australia actually provides the fourth highest number of foreign visitors to the area. In fact, Australia is right behind Russia, Germany and the UK. There were more than 275,000 Australians that visited Thailand by the end of May. Due to this. Almost $3.23 billion was spent. This is the fourth highest recorded spending rate among visitors.

Despite this increase in visitors, there has not been a higher hotel occupancy rate. This is bad news for the hotels in Thailand. The marketing chairman of the Thai Hotels Association, Ms Suprawan Tanomkieatipume, said that Thailand’s 30,000 four and five start hotels have shown occupancy of only 45 percent. This is down a lot from the normal 75 percent mark.

She did not stop there. She went on to add that these figures would rise again soon. The hope is that these numbers will start to increase once more European and Australian visitors start flocking back to the country. A lot of people normally come to Thailand during June and July. However, they also come during December and January as well.

Due to the country’s recent political turbulence, people have been avoiding Thailand. However, this political turbulence has not affected investment. In fact, there should be some 4,000 new rooms available by the end of December.