Thailand is looking to develop measures for vaccinated travellers in an effort to revive the tourism industry and hopes to welcome visitors back by the third quarter of 2021.
New measures may include a shortened or even waived mandatory quarantine, according to the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) Governor Yuthasak Supasorn.
He told Reuters, “We have to be fast because we want to start welcoming tourists in the third quarter.”
TAT also also announced that tourism workers will be among the first groups to be vaccinated, and has asked for 100,000 doses of the vaccine to inoculate tourism workers in five tourism-heavy provinces: Chon Buri, Krabi, Phang Nga, Chiang Mai and Phuket.
The country is desperate to restore a tourism industry that has collapsed in the wake of the pandemic. In 2019, the country welcomed 40 million foreign visitors who generated a total of 1.91 trillion baht (€51 billion) for the national economy; in 2020 the country received only 6.7 million visitors who added 332 billion baht (€9 billion) to the national coffers.
