Bali and Phuket’s race to reopen to tourists – will it be a case of tortoise beats hare?

The Thai island’s ‘sandbox’ reopening after its pandemic shutdown has hit some speed bumps, but it still expects to welcome over 120,000 visitors by October

Bali, where the tourist industry is reeling and families are going hungry, can only look on with envy as Covid-19 cases rise – and keep planning for a reopening

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Locals and tourists attend an event organised to mark the opening of Phuket to international tourists on Patong beach. What will it take for Bali in Indonesia, which has seen day after day of record-breaking new case numbers, to reopen? Photo: Getty Images

Published: 12:15pm, 17 Jul 2021Updated: 3:36pm, 17 Jul 2021

Asia’s two most popular resort islands, Phuket in Thailand and Indonesia’s Bali, have been in a race to see which would reopen to international tourists first.

Phuket, which on July 1 launched its much anticipated “sandbox” scheme, has won that particular race. The scheme uses vaccines, testing and tracing apps to welcome back travellers from low-risk countries – such as China and the United States – without a need for hotel quarantine.

“This is the perfect place to just relax and clean our minds, our heads, after a long time,” Sigal Baram, from Israel, one of 5,174 tourists to arrive in Phuket in the first two weeks of the sandbox scheme, told the Bangkok Post. The Thailand Tourism Authority predicts 124,000 foreign tourists will have followed in her footsteps by September.

Koh Samui, Thailand’s second largest island, launched a sandbox of its own on July 15 but requires arrivals to spend their first few days in hotel quarantine. However, with a recent poll by the International Air Transport Association showing 84 per cent of respondents have no interest in holidaying at places that require quarantine, uptake is likely to be poor.

Patong’s Bangla Road, Phuket’s main nightlife street. Although some travellers have started to arrive on the island, the prospects of the tourism industry still look precarious. Photo: Getty Images

Still, it’s a start – and it’s something Bali was denied after a similar plan, that would have allowed tourists to soft-quarantine within one of four designated green zones, was axed thanks to a new wave of Covid-19 fuelled by the highly infectious Delta strain.