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Thailand has welcomed its first group of tourists in seven months, part of an experiment aimed at testing whether a wider opening is possible as the coronavirus cripples the kingdom’s economy.
A plane full of 39 Chinese tourists flew into Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport on Tuesday night from Shanghai to be welcomed by personnel in full protective gear.
The visitors underwent health checks and their luggage was disinfected, before donning protective clothing and being transferred to a two-week quarantine.
“It is a welcome sign that foreigners trust our security measures,” Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul said in a statement.
“I instructed the officials to take good care of the tourists, because if they are safe, the Thais are too.”
The pandemic has brought the economy of the Southeast Asian nation to its knees, with eight million expected to lose their jobs by the end of the year.
Many of those losses will occur in the tourism sector, in a country that recorded 40 million international arrivals in 2019.
Vacationers have taken advantage of a special tourist visa scheme, which offers 1,200 places and allows people to stay for up to nine months.
The number of arrivals was much lower than the 150 passengers that the authorities promoted last month.
Tourism officials declined to give a reason, but insisted it was not related to recent clashes between pro-democracy protesters and the police in the Thai capital and elsewhere.
Tourism consultant Bill Barnett admitted that the ongoing riots were damaging Thailand’s image, but said the country could drive visitors away from Bangkok.
Mario Hardy of the Bangkok-based Asia Pacific Travel Association agreed, saying that civil unrest has never deterred tourists from visiting Thailand in the past.
“They know it is isolated, it is a local problem and it is not aimed at tourists,” he said.
A second group of 147 Chinese tourists from Guangzhou will arrive in Thailand next week, followed by a flight from Scandinavia in November.
bpm / rs / oho / rma
