Covid crisis and the making of a luxury destination through dispossession

Following the Covid-19 pandemic, Thailand closed its borders to foreign travelers in April 2020. On the island of Phuket, where 80% of the economy and most of the jobs are linked to tourism - and mainly international tourism - the travel restrictions had a significant impact on the local economy: massive job losses, hotel and restaurant closures, etc. For the government, the pandemic was an opportunity to implement its vision for tourism development, namely the development of quality tourism, as expressed in the National Strategy 2017-2036, as well as the National Tourism Development Plan 2017-2021. Despite a conceptual vagueness surrounding the notion of "quality tourism", the way the term is defined by the Thai government is akin to high-end tourism where the goal is to attract fewer tourists, but tourists who spend more during their stay. The logic behind Thailand's tourism development plan is that fewer tourists will reduce the pressure on the natural environment, but will not reduce revenues by targeting wealthier tourists. The Minister of Tourism himself stated that "one person can easily spend more than five people by staying in the most high-end hotels”. As such, in the case of Thailand, quality tourism is more akin to a form of luxury tourism. Supported by 8 months of field research in Thailand and triangulation of data (official documents, semi-structured interviews and participant observation), this conference paper will show that the policies implemented during the Covid and aligned with a vision of "quality tourism" have provoked a process of exclusion of smaller tourism actors in favor of a greater concentration of capital among a national and international elite. Using the framework of Hall, Hirsch and Murray Li (2011 - Powers of Exclusions: Land Dilemmas in Southeast Asia), it is first shown how the four types of power leading to exclusion (regulation, market, force and legitimation) were used during the Covid-19 pandemic to dispossess smaller local tourism actors. Justified by health and environmental reasons, it is then explained how this allows the government to transform Phuket into a quality (or rather luxury) tourist destination, privileging actors with enough capital to benefit from this type of tourism.