Pacific money | Business | South East Asia
Eight months after the end of Beijing’s strict “zero COVID” policy, tourist arrivals in Thailand remain sluggish.
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Thailand’s new government announced yesterday that it would temporarily waive tourist visa requirements for visitors from China in a bid to revive the country’s economically vital tourism industry.
In a cabinet meeting yesterday, Nikkei Asia reported that Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin’s new government approved the visa-free policy, which will allow tourists from both nations to enter Thailand freely from September 25 to the end of February 2024. The policy also applies to visitors from Kazakhstan.
Relevant authorities have been consulted to ensure they are prepared for the expected surge in travelers, said Srettha, who took office on September 5.
According to the Associated Press, the government proposed the measure because the number of Chinese tourists this year is unlikely to reach the government’s original target of 5 million. According to the Tourism Authority of Thailand, around 1.4 million Chinese tourists visited the country in the first six months of this year.
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Chai Wacharonke, a spokesman for the Prime Minister’s Office, told the ` that the tourism industry is “the only remaining economic engine that can be fueled with the hope of quickly generating new revenue for Thailand.”
The visa-free policy is just one of several economic measures that Srettha’s government, which was launched under controversial circumstances last month, will introduce in the coming months to boost an export-oriented economy that has underperformed so far in 2023’s bold stimulus plan , in which the government will pay out up to 560 billion baht (about $15.8 billion) to the country’s population over six months, as well as a reduction in electricity fees and diesel prices and a three-year debt relief program for farmers.
Tourism is also a logical focus. The economically vital sector – Thai officials estimate international visitors brought in a staggering 1.9 trillion baht ($53.2 billion) in 2019 – has yet to fully recover from the COVID-19 pandemic downturn and associated international travel restrictions recover.
COVID-19 slowed tourism in Thailand: International tourist arrivals fell from a record 40 million in 2019, the last full year before the pandemic, to 6.7 million in 2020 and then to a meager 428,000 in 2021. The total number of international visitors recorded in 2022 was 11.15 million, exceeding the government’s target of 10 million, but the recovery has slowed this year. This is particularly true for arrivals from China, which accounted for 11 million, or about 28 percent, of total international tourist arrivals in 2019.
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This is a byproduct of Beijing’s strict “zero COVID” policy, which until January made international travel abroad complicated and costly, both in terms of time and money. According to Reuters, only 274,000 Chinese tourists visited Thailand last year.
Thailand welcomed 15 million international visitors in the first seven months of this year and hopes to reach 28 million international visitors by the end of 2023, up from a previous annual target of 25 million.
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