Home ›› 28 Oct 2021 ›› World Biz
Hotels, street food carts and tuk-tuks are gearing up for the return of tourists to Bangkok as Thailand prepares to re-open on November 1 to fully vaccinated visitors after 18 months of Covid travel curbs.
But the steamy metropolis, the world’s most visited city before the pandemic, will take some time to get back to its pulsating, intoxicating old self, industry experts say.
The coronavirus pandemic sent visitor numbers plummeting from 40 million in 2019 to just 73,000 in the first eight months of 2021 -- leaving its tourism-reliant economy registering its worst performance in over two decades.
Authorities are desperate to revive the sector -- which accounts for a fifth of the economy -- despite Thailand still recording about 10,000 Covid infections a day and the vaccination rate lagging at about 40 percent.
The government is hopeful that a plan to phase out tough quarantine rules could lure visitors back to bars and beaches despite the prevalence of the virus.
“We have estimated the tourism industry will return to normal levels around the middle of next year,” Bangkok Metropolitan Administration spokesman Pongsakorn Kwanmuang said.
The kingdom is expecting the return of at least a million visitors by March and to generate about $30 billion in revenue through 2022, authorities say.
Its capital Bangkok was once the most visited city in the world, surpassing Paris and London in 2018 for the fourth consecutive year, according to Mastercard’s Global Destination Cities Index.
Today, the absence of visitors has left an unmistakable impact on Bangkok’s Chinatown, with shuttered shops visible under the glare of neon lights and lines of empty tuk-tuks.
Samran, a driver for 25 years, saw his income drop by 90 percent and now earns just $3 a day.
“I want to stop but I am old, no one will hire me for anything else,” the 58-year-old said.
“I haven’t picked up a single tourist since April 2020.”
That was when Thailand closed its airspace to international flights in a bid to keep Covid at bay.
After this restriction was relaxed, authorities imposed a 14-day hotel quarantine, discouraging all but the most determined travellers.
A scheme to make it easier to visit the southern holiday island of Phuket, introduced in July as a first step towards normalcy, drew only a few tens of thousands of people -- a drop in the ocean.
