Thailand is known to be one of the most popular tourism economies within the ASEAN bloc of countries. As a consequence of the creation of ASEAN, there are a number of opportunities and threats entry poses including access to a large regional tourism market from the ten member states but also the proliferation of regional competition. The Bangkok Post (25.06.15) recently reported that whilst Thailand had been successful in attracting tourists from China (4.6 million during 2014) there was a risk over ‘over-dependency’ on such a lucrative market. This paper attempts to argue that a more balanced tourism promotion policy through the provision of wider ‘up-country’ development of tourism products is required. With declining returns from agricultural outputs and the growing unpredictability of rice crop yields in part due to climate change, development of alternative engines of economic growth for the Thai economy are proposed. In addition, entry in to ASEAN means that large multinational companies (MNCs) have increasing options to relocate their business operations in difficult economic times. Thailand must be prepared to train its workforce to be ASEAN ready, particularly in key industrial strength areas (Seagate in Korat is an example used) where English proficiency can be seen to hinder Thailand’s progression up the economic value chain. Key to this argument is the development of the Northeast region in terms of infrastructure (to support tourism development) as well as the strengthening of the higher education base from the Rajabhat universities up to and including the research intensive institutions (Khon Kaen University being an example). This requires a significant shift in emphasis from the Thai state who have been criticised for an over centralised investment within the Bangkok Metropolitan Region (BMR) rather than distributing the fruits of Thai economic growth to the regions of Thailand. The same strategies from the past will not work in the future-tourism development in the Northeast requires detailed planning because ‘mass’ tourists will not simply travel to remote rural locations without an incentive. Targeting the trend towards, alternative, ‘niche’ tourism forms such as volunteer tourism are proposed as possible solutions to aid the development of small local communities and help as part of a wider economic development plan for lagging regional economies within Thailand.