Welcome to Club Thailand. Your Limo is Waiting.
Travel Blog • Jim Benning • 01.08.04 | 9:16 PM ET
If you like visiting Thailand and have $25,000 to spare, you can be among the first owners of a “Thailand Elite” card, a wacky tourism program designed by Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra to attract big-money visitors. So far, about 100 tourists, many of them Chinese, have paid the one-time $25,000 membership fee, which entitles them to a five-year multiple-entry visa, free golf, airport limousine trips and a number of other perks. “Promoters of the VIP plan admit that snob value is part of the appeal when it comes to Asian travelers with a penchant for members-only clubs and public displays of wealth,” according to an article about the program in the Christian Science Monitor. “The sales brochure holds out the tantalizing prospect of rubbing shoulders with ‘celebrities from around the world’ that are being targeted as potential VIPs.”
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Jim Benning is the editor and co-founder of World Hum.
