Thai travel sector slowly reawakens as travel restrictions removed
The easing of travel restrictions has brought as many as 1.61 million tourists to Thailand so far this year, up 3,895 per cent from 2021.
Tourist arrivals especially surged after the Centre for Covid-19 Situation Administration (CCSA)'s scrapped the Test & Go scheme from May 1 and from June 1 allowing unvaccinated or partly vaccinated tourists to enter the Kingdom by just providing a negative ATK or RT-PCR test result taken within 72 hours of departure.
The number of arrivals has been steadily rising from 133,903 in January to 476,171 in May and 348,699 in June.
Since January 1, the highest number of tourists came from India (169,131), followed by Malaysia (137,969), the United Kingdom (107,438), Singapore (98,701) and Germany (86,480).
In June, meanwhile, the largest number of visitors came from Malaysia (61,486), followed by India (51,800), Singapore (31,580), Vietnam (18,885) and the United States (15,708).
Tourism and Sports Minister Phiphat Ratchakitprakarn said on Friday that at least 7.5 million tourists are expected to visit Thailand this year.
However, he added, his ministry will launch additional campaigns, especially during the October to December high season, to bring the number of arrivals up to 10 million people this year. He said he expects at least 1.5 million arrivals per month during the high season or 50,000 people per day.
"CCSA's move to scrap Thailand Pass and the mask mandate, as well as allowing nighttime entertainment venues to stay open until 2am from July 1 will draw more tourists to Thailand," he said.