Thailand welcomes its first tourists

(Phuket) A few hundred foreign travelers landed in Thailand on Monday, which is reopening to international visitors after an 18-month lockdown, a beacon of hope for the tourism industry bloodless since the pandemic.

By late afternoon, Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport, once one of the busiest in the world, had welcomed 1,500 foreign tourists, according to its director Kittipong Kittikachorn. He expects some 70,000 over the whole of November, a drop of water.

The coronavirus pandemic has hit the realm, which is heavily dependent on tourism, hard and last year recorded its worst economic performance since the Asian financial crisis of 1997.

To remedy this, the government now exempts travelers from more than 60 countries from quarantine (United States, China, India, Australia, France, United Kingdom, etc.).

They must be vaccinated, provide a negative COVID-19 test taken in the country of origin, take a second one within 24 hours of arrival, and stay overnight at the hotel.

André Winkler, a 55-year-old German, used to spend six months of the year in Thailand during the winter and had not returned since the onset of the crisis.

“I am delighted to find the country, the Thais, the food,” he smiles after crossing immigration to Suvarnabhumi.

Phuket International Airport has also received a few tourists.

“We’re going to play golf, relax,” says Lin Hurley, who came from the Netherlands with his wife.

The pearl of the Andaman Sea, which received more than 9 million visitors in 2019, is stricken.

In the famous red light district of Patong, the go go bars are empty and, a few kilometers further north, the beach remains almost deserted.

“It’s so sad to see that everything is closed,” sighs Yoav Gannod who came from Australia with his wife.

When tourist groups flocked to the beaches, Dit made up to $ 150 a day renting lounge chairs and selling juices.

Closed for several months, his small business has just reopened, but only generates $ 30.

“We had to use our savings, grow vegetables, catch fish to survive.”

“We don’t expect all the loungers to be filled right away,” he notes, but it will be better than with the “sandbox” plan.

This pilot program had allowed Phuket to reopen in July to vaccinated tourists on the condition of staying on the island two weeks before being able to go elsewhere in Thailand.

But it attracted less than 60,000 visitors in four months.

“More like that”

“The most important thing that the government and I are thinking about right now is getting people’s livelihoods back to normal,” Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha said on Friday.

Tourism accounts for nearly a fifth of the economy, and the impact of the pandemic has spilled over into a variety of sectors, from restaurants to transportation.

The return of travelers will be very gradual: the authorities expect 10 to 15 million visitors next year, far from the record of nearly 40 million in 2019.

The expected revenue for 2022 is around $ 30 billion. “In 2023, we believe they will be close to the 2019 figure,” Tourism Minister Pipat Ratchakitprakarn said.

But professionals are less optimistic: Chinese tourists, Thailand’s main market, are still under strict quarantine when they return home and are unlikely to return for a long time.

In addition, the kingdom still records around 10,000 cases of COVID-19 per day and only 40% of the population has received two doses of the vaccine. In Bangkok, this rate is 80%.

Near Phuket, on the Koh Phi Phi archipelago, made famous by the film The beach, some fear the return of mass tourism and its excesses.

“Before, less fortunate tourists came here and all they wanted was sex, drugs and alcohol,” says Roger Andreu, employee in a dive shop.

“We have to make money, but not that way anymore.”