No easy task for Thailand to revive tourism in October despite policy easing

[webfact]

No easy task for Thailand to revive tourism in October despite policy easing

Source: Global Times

 

A vender carries food for sale at Pattaya beach in Chonburi province, Thailand, September 15, 2020. Photo: Xinhua

Thailand has become the first Southeast Asian country to relax tourism restrictions introduced during the combat against the coronavirus pandemic. Yet, a series of epidemic prevention and control requirements for tourists show that it is not so easy for Thailand to revive its tourism sector under the threat of an outbreak.

Last week, the Thai government unveiled a Special Tourist Visa plan to allow foreign tourists to enter, starting on October 1. The special visa will allow a stay for at least 90 days, and could be extended twice to a maximum stay of 270 days, a policy that is apparently designed to lure more long-stay visitors to help its tourism-reliant economy.

While the Southeast country may be eager to open its doors to foreign tourists, it also doesn't want to ruin the hard-won achievements in successfully bringing the outbreak under control, which is why it has set up a list of restrictions for foreign tourists that want to visit the country. These requirements and regulations are, of course, understandable, but they are also strict enough to demonstrate the complexities and difficulties that come with tourism recovery.

 

Full story: https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1201476.shtml

 

-- © Copyright Global Times 2020-09-22

 

 

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[AlexRich]

I don’t think Thailand will see tourism until this virus has passed. Only people with connections will be prepared to jump through hoops. There is a lot going on in Thailand currently.

[Shey420]

So dumb. Here should be what they put in place. Tourist stuck in thailand must leave or get visa extended. 

-30,000b for in additional four month tourist visa

Or 10,000b for each renewal month up to four months. Generates new money and keeps some tourist you all ready have in.

 

Long term visa for anyone will to quarantine for 14 days with testing. Must have or get insurance upon arrival. Thats it. No extra paper work or booking 90 day accommodations ahead of time. This will also allow retiree and other people locked out to return.

 

Everyone should be allowed because its quarantinefor all. In no time the economy will begin to recover. 

 

They can also still do travel corridors between minimum covid countries to have some kind of minimum/no quarantine 

[Justgrazing]

1 hour ago, webfact said:

lure

Try lasso they might have more luck .. 

[Laughing Gravy]

Finally someone has taken their head out of the sand and realised all these ridiculous attempts at reviving tourism, were not only futile but bordering on the edge of insanity. Being optimistic is fine but most of the recent ideas have been absolutely ludicrous that even a child with an average education could see they would fail.  

 

Great sense of humour waking up and reading yet another TAT idea that makes me laugh due to the lack of any understanding.

Edited September 21, 2020 by Laughing Gravy

[Grumpy John]

Beating a dead horse comes to mind.   As much as I get endless enjoyment from the verbal diarrhea spewing forth from people who should keep their traps shut the fact of the matter is the issue of helping the needy is not being considered as the #1 issue.  It's bordering on madness to ignore the plight of your own citizens. All this waffle about tourists coming is getting tiring.  No one is going to go through the 99 steps to get here when other countries await. 

[jabis]

Policy easing you say? 

Better get deep under them covers, so that this easing won't hit my face 

[ezzra]

I'm waiting until Thailand will be so desperate to actually PAY tourists to come here...

[donnacha]

The long-stay aspect of this is promising.

Somewhere, deep in the Thai bureaucracy, a lonely brain cell is flickering hesitantly to life and realizing that, if they want to keep the fallen hulk of their tourism industry on life support, they are going to need every tourist they can get for as long as they can get them.

It senses that they are going to be in a knife fight with every other country desperate to save their tourism industry.

There is something delicious in fact that a government who, while trampling democracy, have arrogantly denied that Thailand even needed foreigners, are now unlikely to survive if they cannot somehow patch the economic hole left by our disappearance.

My guess is that, as vaccines of questionable efficacy become widely available next year, all governments will quietly agree to pretend they are a solution. Thailand will drop the quarantine requirement and keep the insurance requirement, but also keep the ability for tourists to stay 270 days. They will also ease up on retirees, possibly dropping the 90-day reporting requirement.

 

[yellowboat]

3 hours ago, webfact said:

Thailand has become the first Southeast Asian country to relax tourism restrictions

It is also probably most tourism reliant country in southeast Asia. 

 

Had they had reasonable visas like Malaysia or Vietnam, there would be more money in the coffers.  But no, cha cha had to play games with immigration.  

[alianware]

The word "lure" match exactly what thailand is doing now. A stupid STV hotel monopole model. A discrimination Model. Only stupid people will spend money for the luxus prison and do stupid online shopping for 14 days. Just wait and see how far it will go. 

[holy cow cm]

It is sort of braindead that they really could and should offer an easy way for the tourists still here to pay up and stay instead of being shown the door. What would a good price be? 5k extended for 3 months? Defeats their tourism drive and purpose entirely. 

[mr mr]

i bet i can get more people to thumbs up this comment then they can get for a 2 week quarantine. nonsense talk. 

 

to thailand please pay close attention to stevie.......i really like the part from 3:20 onward

 

 

Edited September 22, 2020 by mr mr

[ChipButty]

It's got that way in Thailand nothing is easy

[JonnyF]

They should let long stayers in (any form of long term visa) subject to 15 days quarantine (don't try to turn this requirement into an excuse to fleece people on overpriced hotels etc.) and also make it easy for people who are already here to stay here. They could also drop the 400k/800k in the bank requirement to encourage people to start spending their cash. Also, stop the double pricing (or x10 at national parks) at tourist attractions to get foreigners already in the country travelling domestically. Believe it or not, a lot of expats are cashed up right now as they haven't been able to do very much for the last 6 months so encourage them to get out spending it. 

 

That's about the best they can hope for. Nobody is going to jump through the current hoops to stay a couple of weeks, it's just not worth it.

 

It's kind of ironic that after all of the anti foreigner sentiment and tightening up on immigration ("Why you come stay Thailand too many times" and TM30 requirements that actively discourage foreigners from domestic travel that they end up in a predicament in which they literally have NO tourists. Hopefully they'll remember this lesson, but I doubt it ????.

[Stargeezr]

If TAT and the Thai government had a brain, then they would make it easy

for the foreignors who are in Thailand to keep staying in Thailand. They would make

it easy for the expats to stay in Thailand,  They would also make it easier for

people who are trying to get to Thailand who have property, loved ones or family

to get to Thailand.  Oh,  if they only  had  a brain.   Thanks to Alice in Wonderland for

that story line.

Geezer

[brommers]

To my mind it is not easing the situation if you have to go through 31 steps to even apply for an STV! And then how do you find a flight? If there is a forecast of 300 people per week arriving on an STV this amounts to one A350 passenger load. So who will operate this flight and from where!

 

In no way is this ludicrous visa going to help a tourism industry in collapse. Here in Chiang Mai most hotels remain closed and those that are open have 15% occupancy and will be bankrupt very soon. This bunch of aged soldiers has no idea what to do and comes up with one half assed idea after another. Meanwhile millions of people who worked in tourism remain unemployed and in some cases destitute.

[bronzedude]

Tourism, Tourism, Tourism!!! When helping the common Thai people should be the priority. Som Nam Na

[JusticeGB]

"Easing of restrictions?" 

 

What a ridiculous idea. The hoops to jump over are immensely complicated and expensive and require 2 weeks of effective imprisonment. No smoking or alcohol allowed paying extra for rooms with balconies which can't be used and being confined to your hotel room. A fantastic start to a holiday and when leaving your prison most of your favourite restaurants will have already been closed down for lack of customers. Pattaya is in a death spiral and I have heard that Phuket is in a similar situation. Thailand will get bad reviews very quickly from dissatisfied tourists. 

 

[AbeNormal]

1 hour ago, bronzedude said:

Tourism, Tourism, Tourism!!! When helping the common Thai people should be the priority. Som Nam Na

because they think there are hundreds of thousands of people that can't wait to get back to wonderful high class Thailand at any cost, promoting quarantine as a fun experience, it is quite shocking that they actually think in this way, one person reported their experience on here about how much it cost for a 14 day stay, it was Bt300k + paid up front by the time they counted it all up and the process was doomed to failure at any given moment which would result in almost total loss of the full expense

 

They are doing everything they possibly can to avoid having to support their own people who are now in dire straights, don't forget there is no welfare here, people out of work get nothing yet the government claims they are cash rich, there are people all over this country that are starving and having to line up for food handouts every day 

 

It also seems these strict quarantine rules only apply to westerners, this month there have been many new tourists spotted wandering around Pattaya, they are from S'Korea, so Thailand is already letting tourists back here and saying very little about it, you see them wandering around in groups with their selfie sticks, very easy to spot. 

[AbeNormal]

1 hour ago, JusticeGB said:

"Easing of restrictions?" 

 

What a ridiculous idea. The hoops to jump over are immensely complicated and expensive and require 2 weeks of effective imprisonment. No smoking or alcohol allowed paying extra for rooms with balconies which can't be used and being confined to your hotel room. A fantastic start to a holiday and when leaving your prison most of your favourite restaurants will have already been closed down for lack of customers. Pattaya is in a death spiral and I have heard that Phuket is in a similar situation. Thailand will get bad reviews very quickly from dissatisfied tourists. 

 

but they claim it is fun 555

 

it is so much fun that once they get them locked up in that room they don't want to leave lol

 

idiotic nonsense

[khunPer]

There are so much I don't under about Thailand, one of them is why Covid-19 safe foreigners – the stranded tourists already inside the country – are forced out to be replaced with an unknown amount of perhaps quality tourists; i.e. some may have condo or house, and stay there after the quarantine, instead of spending thousands of baht every day in a luxury resort.

 

If there for example are 15,000 stranded tourists that wish to stay – they probably wish, otherwise they would have left by now – spending in average just 2,000 baht each a day, which is not an unlikely average, they would generate 900 million baht a month. It's pretty close to the calculated 1.2 billion baht from 1,200 quality tourists, if they really spend 1 million baht each a month. We don't know the amount of stranded tourist, my qualified guess of 15,000 might be too high, or way too slittle; I've seen others guessing 50,000. However, I know that at one point the governor of Surat Thani province talked about 10,000 stranded tourists, the majority on the islands Phangan and Samui, and the locals knew for fact that a number of these stranded tourists stayed, and still stay, in the higher price-end resorts, where 2,000 baht a day might hardly cover drinks, food and snacks (like 800 - 1,700 baht for a dinner main dish + starter + side dish + dessert + whatever you drink, a mineral water is 190 baht, all of course plus service & tax).

 

Keeping the stranded tourists might generate somewhere between 900 million baht, and perhaps up to 3 billion baht, a month; even a few hundred million baht a month can be a welcomed help in the tourist sector...

 

Another thing I don't understand is the 1.2 billion baht a month calculation. Is that amount for each lot of 1,200 long-stay quality tourist, or is it a sum from three month's arrivals, i.e. when there are 3,600 here?

 

Considering that some are home owners, perhaps quite a bit, they will not spend a million baht a month. Others might come in their private airplanes – that's stated as a possibility in the conditions for entry – and they might spend a million baht a month, or average 33,000 baht a day, or even more; it's easily possible if you choose the right 5-star luxury resort, or the right fully serviced sea view hi-so pool villa. For a typical about two weeks holiday it's not impossible at all that a relative high number of people would spend half a million baht, either as a pair, or even per head. The question is however, how many of those – in my modest view – wealthy people, coming in their own airplanes or by charter, which would wish to enter Thailand at all with a 2-week quarantine as starter, and stay here for 90 days, or more, on that level of budget?

 

Why not keep what you already have, and consider the long-stay option as extra bonus...????

Edited September 22, 2020 by khunPer

[khunPer]

Addition: I read in a Thai newspaper (I cannot quote or link) today that 150,000 foreigners face arrest if they don't renew their tourist-visa by September 26th; so the number of stranded tourist might well be higher than both 15,000 and 50,000...????

[surfinglife]

10 hours ago, AlexRich said:

I don’t think Thailand will see tourism until this virus has passed. Only people with connections will be prepared to jump through hoops. There is a lot going on in Thailand currently.

Which means never. The virus is going nowhere, it is here to stay. 

[AlexRich]

10 hours ago, surfinglife said:

Which means never. The virus is going nowhere, it is here to stay. 

The virus will fizzle out eventually, just as it did in 1919, a vaccine will help of course, and that might show up next year. This too shall pass.

[Marco100]

Quote =" Despite Policy Easing " ????????

Should be " Despite Policy getting difficoult...

Why even bother opening ? 

Private Jets,  Chartred Airplanes , 14 days quarantine previous boarding and 14 days quarantine at arrival ,  4 CV Test , Apps , Qualified Countries , bla bla bla

For what ? Visiting a Quarantine Hotel in Bangkok in October Raining Season ? Seriously?

Even if it is a Test what's the aim of it ?

Well good night and good luck ????

 

[Grumpy John]

I know I didn't think of it till now but This new long stay special visa isn't supposed to work. TheY,  being the government,  don't want it to work!  For whatever Obsurd reason they have made it so convoluted and difficult potential tourist will reject it outright.   Now,  the 64.000 baht question is why?   Why are they he11 bent on a course of action that will add to the damage of the whole country?  Someone on TVF must know. 

Edited September 22, 2020 by Grumpy John
Smelling

[alianware]

3 hours ago, Marco100 said:

Quote =" Despite Policy Easing " ????????

Should be " Despite Policy getting difficoult...

Why even bother opening ? 

Private Jets,  Chartred Airplanes , 14 days quarantine previous boarding and 14 days quarantine at arrival ,  4 CV Test , Apps , Qualified Countries , bla bla bla

For what ? Visiting a Quarantine Hotel in Bangkok in October Raining Season ? Seriously?

Even if it is a Test what's the aim of it ?

Well good night and good luck ????

 

They think have found the smart solution. They still don't know how stupid and rediculous the regulation they made.

[alianware]

20 hours ago, brommers said:

To my mind it is not easing the situation if you have to go through 31 steps to even apply for an STV! And then how do you find a flight? If there is a forecast of 300 people per week arriving on an STV this amounts to one A350 passenger load. So who will operate this flight and from where!

 

In no way is this ludicrous visa going to help a tourism industry in collapse. Here in Chiang Mai most hotels remain closed and those that are open have 15% occupancy and will be bankrupt very soon. This bunch of aged soldiers has no idea what to do and comes up with one half assed idea after another. Meanwhile millions of people who worked in tourism remain unemployed and in some cases destitute.

They are stupid and pretend to be smart. They are still lucky if they have farang to come in a swamp.

[alianware]

19 hours ago, JusticeGB said:

"Easing of restrictions?" 

 

What a ridiculous idea. The hoops to jump over are immensely complicated and expensive and require 2 weeks of effective imprisonment. No smoking or alcohol allowed paying extra for rooms with balconies which can't be used and being confined to your hotel room. A fantastic start to a holiday and when leaving your prison most of your favourite restaurants will have already been closed down for lack of customers. Pattaya is in a death spiral and I have heard that Phuket is in a similar situation. Thailand will get bad reviews very quickly from dissatisfied tourists. 

 

they want you to do shoping online in prison. How idiot the thai politic could be. Thay thin in origin country have no luxus shopping ???? .. so what should we buy online in thailand ?? Papaya salat ???