Pattaya Immigration Present Online Immigration.....

[libya 115]

SOURCE: Pattaya Daily News: April 5th 2007

PATTAYA IMMIGRATION PRESENT ONLINE IMMIGRATION SYSTEM TO HOTELIERS.

Pattaya Immigration is to install a centralised, online system linked to all the accommodation providers in the city to log the comings and goings of guests, especially foreigners.

This announcement was made at 2 pm on the 4th of April at a seminar given by the Pattaya Immigration, Tourism and Business Association for managers and proprietors of hotels, guesthouses and all other accommodation in Pattaya, presided over by Mr.Niran Wattanasartsathorn, the Mayor of Pattaya.

The seminar was extremely well attended by representatives of the accommodation industry and other interested individuals who will be tasked with feeding immigration information to the central computer.

Delegates at the seminar were instructed in the use of the system by the technician and trainer from the Software tech. Thailand Company, who are responsible for the implementation of the system.This, essentially, is a registration program linked to the central immigration system.

The Immigration Office informed the delegates that they have been running the system, since September 2005, but there are many new hotel, apartments and guesthouses who do not or cannot use the program, effectively, which has to go via the internet.

The Immigration Police, also stipulated that this system is compulsory and specifies by law that all legally licensed accommodation premises must report to Immigration details of customers who check into their properties within 24 hours (according to the Immigrant Act, year 1979, clauses 38 and 77). The penalties for non-compliance by any hotel or accommodation operator is a fine of between 2000-10000 Baht.

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Comment from PDN Editor

After studying the Immigration system and its associated program, one wonders why they can’t run the system on line via the Immigration web site instead of keying in the data i.e. the details of the hotel guests into the Excel program which then has to be further converted into a state suitable for input into the immigration database.

The current set-up renders is vulnerable to incorrect data input, never mind the fact that there is a high turnover of staff responsible for inputting this data, all of whom have to trained anew every time they are replaced.

One also wonders if customers who are criminals or surreptitious short time guests will have to quietly check into condos somewhere, instead of 5 star hotels, to avoid being identified.