Thailand ready for rush of tourists with quarantine-free visas

[BANGKOK] Thailand expects to welcome hundreds of thousand holidaymakers a month with the kickoff of a quarantine-free visa program that's set to serve as a model for tourism-reliant countries balancing safe border reopenings with economic revival.

Starting Tuesday (Feb 2), visitors of any nationality can apply for quarantine-free entry into Thailand, provided they are fully vaccinated.

The government expects between 200,000 and 300,000 travelers to take advantage of the so-called Test & Go program in February alone, with the numbers expected to swell in the following months.

The wider reopening - a previous quarantine-free program was restricted to visitors from only about 60 countries - is part of Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-Ocha's push to adopt a "living with the Covid strategy" to rescue the pandemic-battered economy.

About a fifth of gross domestic product before the virus came from tourism-related activities. Thailand moved up 18 places in Bloomberg's latest Covid resiliency ranking with its ramp-up in vaccinations and taming of the omicron-fueled outbreak.

Prayuth's government expects 5 million foreign visitors this year, with the majority of arrivals expected from Europe and the US, and the numbers may reach 9 million if Chinese and Indian tourists return, according to spokesman Thanakorn Wangboonkongchana.

The outlook will remain hazy for the next few months, especially in terms of attracting travelers from China, the biggest group of visitors to Thailand before Covid, according to Tim Leelahaphan, a Bangkok-based economist at Standard Chartered.

Still, the reopening should help Thailand swing back to a current-account surplus of about 1.5 per cent of GDP this year, although the level will be below the average before the pandemic, he said in a report.

Thailand has experimented with several plans over the past two years to revive the travel sector, which attracted 40 million foreign tourists and generated more than US$60 billion in 2019.

About 350,000 visitors took advantage of the first phase of the Test & Go program before it was suspended in late December to prevent the spread of omicron variant.

"Thailand is among the world's top tourist destinations because of all the beautiful attractions and the value for money," said Burin Adulwattana, chief economist at Bangkok Bank.

"But the government should try to instill confidence among travelers that the policies won't change again." BLOOMBERG