A health worker exits a mobile vaccination unit in Bangkok, Thailand, Sept 8, 2021. (SAKCHAI LALIT / AP)
Despite lower-than-expected tourist arrivals, Thailand’s reopening sends promising signals to tourism destinations around the world as the Southeast Asian country tests out how to open up safely amid the COVID-19 pandemic, experts said.
Jesper Palmqvist, area director for Asia Pacific at data and consulting company STR, noted that visitor numbers in Thailand, following the nation’s moves to reopen some destinations to foreign tourists, have fallen short of expectations, yet the initiative “definitely … matters”.
As Palmqvist sees it, the signal about restarting tourism during COVID-19, is what is really important in relation to Thailand’s reopening plan.
Since it was launched on July 1, Phuket Sandbox, Thailand’s tourism reopening pilot program that allows quarantine-free travel for vaccinated travellers, has brought some 28,000 international visitors to the island province, generating 1.6 billion baht (US$48.77 million) in revenue, the National News Bureau of Thailand reported on Sept 6.
Since it was launched on July 1, Phuket Sandbox, Thailand’s tourism reopening pilot program that allows quarantine-free travel for vaccinated travellers, has brought some 28,000 international visitors to the island province, generating 1.6 billion baht (US$48.77 million) in revenue, the National News Bureau of Thailand reported
The program initially covered Phuket but was later extended to other select destinations including Koh Samui under a similar format.
The majority of the travellers were from the United States, the United Kingdom, Israel, Germany and France, according to the Tourism Authority of Thailand.
The numbers are a far cry from a previous forecast by the TAT. When the Sandbox program was launched, the TAT said it expects 100,000 foreign tourists to visit Phuket in the third quarter and generating 8.9 billion baht of revenue to the local economy.
But Palmqvist said the numbers still inject confidence into the tourism industry. For example, before the Sandbox, the occupancy rate of hotels in Phuket was only about 1-2 percent, and it went quickly up to 20 percent within two weeks after launch of the program.
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Even after Phuket tightened COVID-19 restrictions, the occupancy rate was still between 15 and 20 percent.
“International tourism (accounts for) about 12 percent of Thailand’s GDP, and for Phuket, (the number) is 80 to 90 percent.” said Yuwanee Prommaporn, a hotels and tourism analyst at Maybank Kim Eng Securities (Thailand).
“So whatever moderate recovery it was, it is still very important (for Phuket).”
“It is also very important to the rest of Thailand to learn from Phuket to handle this situation going forward when we reopen fully in 2022,” Yuwanee told China Daily.
More destinations including Chiang Mai, Hua Hin and Pattaya are planned to reopen from Oct 1, Bangkok Post reported on Sept 6.
Phiphat Ratchakitprakarn, Thailand’s minister of tourism and sports, however, said the reopening of Bangkok has been postponed to November. The whole country will reopen by January 2022, he said, but added that it will largely depend on whether Thailand can achieve herd immunity.
Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-ocha said in June that the country aims to give at least one shot of vaccine to about 50 million people by October to fully reopen to foreign visitors.
However, the vaccination rollout has fallen short of expectations.
The country administered COVID-19 vaccines to 36.64 million people as of Sept 7, but only about 15 percent of the total 70 million population are fully vaccinated against the virus.
"As Thailand is still recording daily caseloads of more than 10,000 and was downgraded to the red list for some target markets, the number of tourists this year might not exceed 300,000," said Phiphat.
"However, if Thailand can return to the safe list this month, there are promising signs in the last quarter we can hope for 1.2 million travellers."
Yuwanee said she expects more significant tourism recovery towards the second half of next year as the current reopening pilot program is just “a preparation”.
The analyst said there will be more tourists to Thailand in the fourth quarter, but the number will not be as high as was expected in July due to rising COVID infections.
Booking cancellations amid tightened restrictions in countries like the UK for travellers returning from Thailand will also be a key reason.
Thailand reported 13,821 new COVID-19 cases on Sept 7, the fewest since July 22, according to the country’s Center for COVID-19 Situation Administration. The number of new fatalities remained high at 241.
Over 6,000 newly confirmed cases and more than half of the new fatalities were reported in Bangkok and neighboring provinces.
Since the pandemic started early last year, Thailand’s total COVID-19 case tally has reached 1,308,343 with 13,283 fatalities.
Thira Woratanarat, an associate professor at Chulalongkorn University's Faculty of Medicine, said in a message posted on his Facebook page that the sandbox programs need to be reviewed in a deeper and more comprehensive way, considering the risk that they may bring imported cases and cause infection transmission.
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Phuket’s governor Narong Woonciew said on Sept 1 that the province is facing a crisis as the number of daily new infections reached more than 200. The island province reported 258 new cases on that day, one of them a tourist who entered under the sandbox program, according to Bangkok Post.
Yuwanee, the analyst from Maybank Kim Eng Securities, said the majority of cases in Phuket involved only mild symptoms, and a high vaccination rate has helped ease the strain on healthcare facilities.
As of Aug 31, about 92 percent of the locals in Phuket have received their first jabs, with 75 percent of them fully vaccinated.
Other countries in Southeast Asia are taking Thailand’s reopening as a cue. For example, Malaysia plans to reopen its popular tourism destination Langkawi to locals from Sept 16. Malaysia’s vaccination rate is nearly 70 percent, one of the highest in the world.
“Any market that reopens successfully sends a strong signal,” said Palmqvist from STR.
