Tourism in Thailand: Exploitation or Opportunity?

The paper explores and compares the perceptions of workers in the tourism industry in Thailand in foreign-owned and locally-owned firms in order to provide an underrepresented perspective to be used in the debate over whether international trade and tourism primarily exploits workers or provides valuable opportunities. A matched-pairs comparative analysis was used, and it was found that employees in both locally-owned and foreign-owned firms generally expressed high levels of job satisfaction, although employees in foreign-owned firms expressed statistically significant higher levels of job satisfaction than did employees in locally owned firms. In debates over whether exploitation or opportunities are created by international trade, foreign investment, and tourism, the viewpoints and perspectives of the workers are often overlooked. The paper intends to help bring into the debate the perspectives of individuals who are most directly affected by these activities.