Tourism/Summer Sonic Bangkok 2024

Chatrudee Theparat

The government pins its hope on Summer Sonic Bangkok 2024 to draw more foreign visitors and earn more tourism revenue.

Summer Sonic Bangkok 2024, held during August 24-25, is expected to draw the big number of foreign visitors to Thailand this year.

Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin said Summer Sonic Bangkok 2024 held will be for the first time in Southeast Asia outside Japan as its homeland festival. The two-day festival, held at Impact Muang Thong Thani, will be held after Tokyo and Osaka.

Mr Srettha hopes the two-day festival with 20 bands will help boost Thailand’s tourism scenario. It will follow Japan’s success story because it could attract 350,000 visitors during the event and also be a significant tool to drive the tourism industry.

“The festival is conformed to the government’s policy to drive Thailand as the tourism hub in the region. Also, it offers a good opportunity for Thai artists to show Thai-ness as the country’s important soft power. I am confident that Thailand has opportunity to become the world’s event destination of collaboration with interested parties.”

Summer Sonic Festival was founded in 2000 in Japan by Naoki Shimizu, CEO of Tokyo-based Creativeman Productions Ltd. The festival has occasionally been held outside Japan, including Shanghai in 2017 and Bangkok in 2024.

Paetongtarn Shinawatra

Paetongtarn Shinawatra, Pheu Thai party leader and vice chairman of the National Soft Power Strategy Committee (NSPSC), said the festival creates business opportunities for Thai economy and tourism promotion both growing tourist numbers and tourism revenue earning.

In addition, Thailand will gain benefits from Summer Sonic Bangkok 2024 in different dimensions. Beyond tourism promotion, food to the country’s image, the Thai side will also get more experience from the festival with knowledge exchange with professionals including organizers, musicians, and artists. The knowledge collection from the event would be adapted to bring development to Thai music industry.

“A sub-committee on music and festivals of NSPSC will further deregulate and amend obstacles for festival organizing, along with a plan to establish a one-stop-service center to facilitate international festivals in Thailand.”

Naoki Shimizu

Naoki Shimizu, Creativeman Productions’s CEO, said the company chose Thailand as the festival destination because Thailand is one of the concert cities, with facilities to attract music lovers to visit this country.

He said there are many world-class bands and artists to participate in the festival such as “Yoasobi” a Japanese pop duo; “Nothing but Thieves”, a British rock band; Aurora Aksnes, known mononymously as Aurora, a Norwegian singer, songwriter and record producer; Laufey, an Icelandic singer-songwriter and record producer.