My blog site has been noticeably busier since mid-June. What got my attention more recently is that my visitor numbers keep climbing even when I haven’t posted anything new in 13 days.
This hasn’t happened before in two years of blogging on Behind the Noodle Curtain -- in fact, this month is my second anniversary.
I just posted on my higher numbers on June 14. I passed the 3,000-hits-a-month plateau. Now the numbers are accelerating and the blog is quickly heading for 3,500-pageview monthly average and it’s only July 11, 2010AD/2553BE.
This evidence and more makes me believe there are more people searching for information on Thailand. Which must mean Thailand is becoming a destination in mind, if not in fact. Yet.
Stickman, a well known commentator on Bangkok night life, last month wrote his weekly column on the issue of foreign visitors to The City of Angels. He said claims that fewer people are going to the fabled Thai paradise is pure BS. His faraway friends are querying him more about vacationing in Thailand, he’s getting more emails about whether visitors will be safe going to the Land of Smiles, and more and more foreigners are expressing a desire to retire there.
His eyes see a different story too. His own neighbourhood is filling with more and more western faces. “I would emphatically say that [the expat population] is increasing. For every resident foreigner who leaves, I would say that 5 – 10 arrive!”
A fellow Thailand blogger, HooDon at The Big Mango Juice, just set a site record for visitors and page views.
I’d give you a better view of my visitor origins and other information from my site numbers if I hadn’t unwittingly removed my StatsCounter coding from the lead page. I found out just as I was researching this that BtNC hadn’t been tracking visitors since early on July 4. Argh!!!
My Google Analytics report doesn’t quite give me the same thing I’m used to with StatsCounter so I can’t tell you where each visitor came from and therefore say whether more and more Icelanders are visiting versus last year. But I can say that, according to Google Analystics, my top 10 visitors originate, in order, from U.S., Thailand, Canada, U.K., Singapore, Malaysia, Germany India and The Philippines. Almost 80 per cent of those in the last 30 days are new visitors.
Should Thailand expect a resurgence of visitors this year? Well if the superficial evidence of rising blog hits and queries received by one of the top Bangkok websites are anything to go by, there could just be a mini-boom, or maybe just a recovery to near normal visits. It will be something the Kingdom sorely needs. But then what if the protests return? I know I’ll be there again this autumn.
As a last note, I’m looking forward to next weekend’s Taste of Thailand in Toronto and see whether there’s a pick-up in the number of festival goers and to talk with the Thailand Tourism reps who will undoubtedly be there. I will post lots of pictures of the event.
