Doing business in Thailand amidst the political problems
As everyone has seen on the news over the past 6 weeks, Thailand is currently experiencing some very serious political problems. Red shirt demonstrators are protesting against the current government, in the hope of calling new elections within the next month. These protests have occasionally turned violent and, tragically, lives have been lost in the fighting. At the time of writing, there still appears to be no logical solution to solving the problems, and even quick fixes (like military intervention) are just that… a quick fix.
We have been asked by numerous people overseas - how is it all effecting business in Thailand? This is an excellent question.
For the vast majority of businesses, we are attempting to continue as normal, although with constant disruptions taking place as a result of the red shirt activities, this is becoming harder and harder to achieve. On a daily basis, we need to check whether the BTS skytrain and MRT underground are actually functioning, and also whether new road blocks are disrupting traffic in certain areas. We have a dedicated person in the office responsible for checking the news and advising the team of new events and problems to be mindful of. On several occasions we have closed the office early, or even all day, in order to avoid potential problems for our staff getting to and from work.
Imagine the lost working hours because of all of this - and this is for a company located several km from the trouble spots.
We have clients, partners and suppliers who have offices in the trouble spots, and many of them simply do not want to ask their staff to go to work. One partner of ours has decided to tell their staff to work from home, whilst others in their team are working from our office. This is an incredible disruption to his business activities.
Meetings are generally going ahead for businesses - but everyone is making allowances for late arrivals and traffic problems. Chamber Events have been postponed or canceled in some cases, but in most they continue. Many companies and groups are turning to teleconferencing and video conferencing as a solution.
Almost all companies here have accepted that 2010 and even 2011 are going to be hard years now. This is especially true of those working in tourism and hospitality, we some hotels reporting occupancy drops of 90%. compared to last year.
At the Sutlet Group, we are therefore making plans to work within the problems, rather than use them as an excuse. Our focus will turn to providing clients with cost-efficient solutions aimed at reducing costs. This will be addressed in the next post.
How are are troubles effecting your business? Let us know.
April 30th, 2010 at 5:20 pm
A good review of the situation. Running a business based just off Silom is hard now, as has been said above we never know if we can get to the office or not. So we have just stopped trying and have moved staff to home or elsewhere.
Talking to customers is now much harder as they are saying wait till its all over then we can talk!!! What is this doing to the general business of the country?
At the start of the year there was talk that the economy of Thailand could grow by as much as 5%, now that are saying that it might hit 2%.
For what?
What will be gained by anyone out of this. Everyone is a looser ESPECIALLY the rural poor, ogh that’s funny the redshirts are supposed to be rallying for them. Or is there another reason that the redshirts are there, I wounder?????