Thailand’s digital economy hit $56 billion in 2025 and is on track for $90 billion by 2030, but online travel growth actually cooled off—up just 6% year over year to $11 billion after a 34% jump in 2024.
Still, the country punches above its weight regionally, accounting for 28% of Southeast Asia’s total gross travel bookings. And Thais are all-in on artificial intelligence (AI). Booking.com found 98% of Thai respondents excited about it, ChatGPT’s local weekly users have quadrupled in a year and Microsoft clocked Thailand as having the second-fastest AI adoption growth rate globally.
WiT's latest Online Travel Tracker: Travel, Tech, Thailand finds that AI enthusiasm isn’t just consumer hype, it’s showing up in serious infrastructure bets.
Microsoft is pouring over $1 billion into cloud and AI data centers in Thailand over the next two years, Google Cloud launched a national agentic-AI program and the Tourism Authority of Thailand has built its own GPT-powered travel assistant.
Meanwhile, Booking.com and Agoda remain the go-to online travel agencies (Agoda just opened a new tech hub in Bangkok housing 4,000 employees), and the government is pushing its own apps—TAGTHAi and a revamped Amazing Thailand app—complete with AI chatbots, value-added tax refund tools and even an SOS button linked to the Tourist Police.
Beyond the obvious players, there’s a whole ecosystem of local startups and travel-adjacent apps carving out niches, from community tourism platforms like Local Alike to super-apps like LINE and Grab expanding into hotel bookings and curated experiences. Only a fraction of Thailand’s 177 travel startups have real funding, which says a lot about where the money and momentum are actually concentrated.
The report breaks down all these players, the funding landscape, and where the real opportunities sit. Download the full report here.
The story originally appeared on WiT.