Indians and Malaysians are leading a tourist rush to Thailand after it relaxed entry rules, with total arrivals topping 2 million since the start of the year and providing a fillip to the Southeast Asian nation’s sluggish economy.
Foreign tourist arrivals totaled 2.03 million from Jan. 1 to Sunday, deputy government spokeswoman Traisuree Taisaranakul said in a statement on Monday.
Travelers from India, Malaysia, the UK, Singapore and the US topped the list, Traisuree said.
Thailand’s tourism industry, which was nearly destroyed during the COVID-19 pandemic, expects average monthly arrivals to surge to about 1.5 million with the country scrapping a pre-travel registration and mandatory medical insurance from Friday.
Southeast Asia’s second-largest economy has rolled back most of the pandemic-era curbs on travel and businesses, and last week lifted a mask mandate, while allowing pubs and bars to return to normal operating hours.
The measures are part of efforts to shore up an economy that depended on tourism to generate about 12 percent of GDP before the pandemic.
A weaker currency and the recent legalization of cannabis might also help bring back more tourists, Thai Minister of Tourism and Sports Phiphat Ratchakitprakarn said last week.
The ministry has set a “conservative” forecast to attract 7.5 million foreign arrivals this year, based on the assumption that Chinese tourists would remain absent due to that country’s “zero COVID-19” policy and factoring in the war in Ukraine, he said.
While Thailand is unlikely to see the levels of tourist arrivals that it had prior to the pandemic without Chinese visitors, a gradual easing of travel curbs for students and business executives, and resumption of flights between the two countries offered optimism of the return of holidaymakers in the second half of this year, Traisuree said in a statement on Sunday.
Chinese tourists made up almost 30 percent of the total of 40 million tourists Thailand received in 2019, the year before the pandemic, official data showed.
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