The Pattaya Cycling Association has canceled two bike events for March and April after the city failed to co-sponsor them.
Both the March Pattaya City Ride and the annual Pattaya Mountain Bike Challenge in April got the axe after city hall declined to provide the supporting budgets it had in prior years, cycling association President Manoj Nongyai said March 23.
Manoj said he was told Pattaya couldn’t sponsor the events due to restrictions placed on the city’s budget by the Office of the Auditor General in 2016 when the office accused Pattaya’s former administrators of wasteful spending on a myriad of tourism-promotion events.
Strangely, the OAG guidance said city funds should go toward sport events, rather than things like music festivals, but the two bike events – similar to those being heavily touted by the Designated Areas for Sustainable Tourism Administration – didn’t pass muster.
Manoj said he was informed in January that the bike events might not get sponsorship, but continued to negotiate, to no avail. He said it was not only group members that were disappointed, but also foreign cyclists who were coming to Pattaya for the events, as they were officially listed on the Tourism Authority of Thailand’s calendar.
He said Pong Sub-district has invited the group to move its events there in 2019.
