Thailand is to receive its first foreign vacationers when a flight from China arrives next week, marking the gradual restart of a vital tourism sector battered by COVID-19 travel curbs, a senior official said yesterday.
The first flight would have about 120 tourists from Guangzhou, flying directly to the resort island of Phuket, Tourism Authority of Thailand Governor Yuthasak Supasorn said.
Thailand has kept COVID-19 infections low with just 3,559 cases and 59 deaths, but its economy has taken a hit from a ban on foreign visitors since April and is expected to contract 8.5 percent this year.
Photo: Reuters
Government spokeswoman Traisulee Traisoranakul said that 1,200 tourists are expected in the first month, generating about 1 billion baht (US$31.58 million) in revenue and 12.4 billion baht over one year with 14,400 tourists.
Nationalities permitted to enter would be from countries deemed low-risk by the government, which would keep tabs on them.
“We are not opening the country, we are limiting the number of entries and will manage with wrist bands, apps to follow them,” Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha told reporters.
The government predicts just 6.7 million foreign visitors this year after a record 39.8 million last year, whose spending made up about 11.4 percent of GDP, or 1.93 trillion baht.
Thailand in January was the first country outside of China to detect the virus, in a visitor from Wuhan.
“Tourists will be on a long-stay visa, starting Oct. 8 and will stay in alternative state quarantine for 14 days,” Yuthasak said.
Visitors would need health insurance and a negative COVID-19 test 72 hours before traveling. They would also be tested twice in quarantine.
“Thailand’s protection system can prevent a second wave,” Traisulee said.
“We have prevented local transmission for 100 days before,” she said, adding that had made Thailand attractive for visitors.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day