News Wednesday that the Thai military had crushed red-shirted, anti-government protesters in Bangkok is deceptive. Burning buildings -- including the Thai Stock Exchange -- offer grim witness that weeks of unrest are far from over. Consequences will last much longer.

Thailand is a difficult place to figure in the calmest of times, let alone during these weeks of violence, chaos and strife. Shorthand assessments of grievances and fissures based on protest shirt colors -- yellow, red, black -- mask the complexity of not only what's wrong today, but of Thai society itself.

"Thailand is not simply experiencing a binary struggle between pro- and anti-government forces but is in the midst of a complex series of revolts that now involve much of the population and most institutions," said Gavin Greenwood of Allan & Associates, a Hong Kong-based political and security risk consultancy.

That's devastating for the Thai economy, especially tourism. This is high season, when hotels are usually packed and planes disgorge thousands of tourists each day. Now, hotel occupancy rates in Bangkok hover at around 20%. Outside the capital, resorts report business has plummeted.

While visitors should begin filtering back in if the violence subsides, investments will take much, much longer to return. Multinational investors will simply go elsewhere. Thai investors will put decisions on hold until it becomes clear where the country is headed, which could take years.

The first evidence of this came last week when Bangkok property developer MBK plc announced it would delay two new hotel projects worth between $60 million and $100 million. According to The Bangkok Post, CEO Suvait Theeravachirakul said construction on the hotels -- one in Bangkok and one on the resort island of Phuket -- will commence about one year after the unrest ends, a rather hazy timeline.

Optimists in the Thai tourism industry argue that Bangkok is already overbuilt anyway, and that investments could move to the beaches and the highlands. That assumes tourists will make the distinction. More ominously, on Wednesday, violent protests broke out in some Thai cities in the north and northeast. Countrywide conflict is now a possibility.

Traditionally, investors in Thailand tend to hold the hotels they develop, said Jones Lang LaSalle Hotels' Andrew Langdon in an interview in The Nation newspaper last month. Beginning in the second half of last year, Langdon began to detect hotel for-sale signs going up, although at unrealistically high prices. That will change. Distressed sales as well as empty lobbies could become new symbols of a once-thriving industry.