Thailand eyes 1 million foreign visitors to Phuket in six months

Bangkok (VNA) – Phuket, an island of Thailand and one of its most popular tourist attractions, expects to generate tens of billions of baht from one million foreign arrivals over the next six months.

The Centre for Economic Situation Administration (CESA) approved on September 30 the Tourism Authority of Thailand's (TAT) plan to promote Phuket as a world-class destination with a goal of generating 60 billion baht (about 1.7 billion USD) during the fourth quarter of this year and the first quarter of 2022.

According to additional data released about the performance of the island's “sandbox” reopening scheme following its launch on July 1, Thai travellers topped the sandbox entrants over the past three months, followed by the US as the biggest international source market.

The sandbox's economic contribution during its first three months was 2.25 billion baht.

Among the 37,978 travellers enrolling in this scheme, 23,215 travelled to other destinations in the country after completing the mandatory 14-day stay in Phuket.

The number of visitors is expected to significantly increase in the final quarter factoring in the quarantine reduction from 14 to seven days starting from October, while a consistent decrease in the infection rate benefits inbound markets in the upcoming high season, said Yuthasak Supasorn, TAT governor.

He said CESA also approved easing of eight travel measures.

Three conditions have been implemented, comprising quarantine reduction; allowing group applications for certificate of entry (COE), which will enable tour operators to help clients process the entry forms; and allowing commercial flights from Russia at the end of October.

Yuthasak said the easing of restrictions should help generate at least 500,000 tour packages via chartered flights over the next six months, of which 295,000 packages would be from the Russian market, for a total of 2.5 million room nights, followed by 130,000 packages from the UK and Nordic countries, generating 200,000 room nights.

However, he said another five conditions require further discussion with related parties, including relaxing the high-risk contact rule for passengers boarding the same flight with a COVID-19 patient, reducing the RT-PCR test price, and reducing mandatory COVID-19 insurance coverage from 100,000 USD to 50,000 USD.

In addition to the reopening programme, CESA said it agreed with the proposal to establish a tourism support fund to give the travel industry a makeover, with an initial budget of 5 billion baht.

Thailan on October 1 morning reported 11,754 new COVID-19 cases and 123 related deaths in the past 24 hours, raising the national count to 1,615,229 and death toll to 16,850./.