Thailand welcomes first tour groups from China since easing of Covid-19 travel curbs
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
A Chinese tourist dressed in a rented Thai traditional costume during a visit to the Temple of Dawn in Bangkok on Jan 23.
PHOTO: EPA-EFE
Follow topic:
BANGKOK – Thailand has welcomed the first tour groups from China since the Covid-19 pandemic began, betting that the return of tourists following Beijing’s reopening will turbocharge the recovery of the South-east Asian country’s vital tourism sector.
Senior Thai government officials and Chinese diplomats lined up at a Bangkok airport on Monday morning to receive the first two groups of about 20 tourists, both from China’s southern province of Guangzhou.
The visitors have a six-day itinerary that will span the capital Bangkok and beyond and take them to popular tourist destinations, from temples to beaches.
The travellers are among the first to leave China in groups after the country included Thailand among 20 destinations for such outbound tours from Monday.
Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha has ordered government agencies to roll out attractive tour packages and marketing deals to draw at least five million Chinese visitors in 2023, according to government spokesman Anucha Burapachaisri.
“We are extremely pleased to receive these first groups and look forward to many more to come,” said Mr Yuthasak Supasorn, governor of the Tourism Authority of Thailand.
Thailand has welcomed nearly 100,000 Chinese tourists in 2023 as at last Thursday, according to the state tourism agency.
That figure comes despite a Covid-19 insurance mandate imposed by the country on visitors from China and India, which require them to show negative polymerase chain reaction test results for their return journey.
The Chinese made up the largest group of visitors to Thailand before the pandemic,
Thailand, South-east Asia’s second-largest economy, expects foreign tourist arrivals to more than double in 2023 from 11.2 million in 2022.
Tourism is a key growth driver and accounts for 12 per cent of the country’s economy.
Thailand has said it expected the rise in the number of Chinese tourists to be gradual because of limited flight availability and lower post-pandemic capacity of tourism operators.
Flights from China to Thailand are expected to return to pre-pandemic levels in 2024. Bloomberg
