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Coronavirus pandemic
AsiaSoutheast Asia

Coronavirus: Thailand offered luxury quarantine to tourists to revive economy, but hardly anyone turned up

  • Thailand had hoped to lure retirees escaping the European winter who could stay for an extended period by undergoing quarantine in high-end resorts
  • But only 346 overseas visitors have entered the country on average each month on special visas since October

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A lone customer walks past a swimming pool at the Vijitt Resort in Phuket, Thailand. File photo: AFP
Bloomberg
It’s hard to imagine a more luxurious place to spend two weeks of quarantine than the Anantara Phuket Suites & Villas in Thailand, where visitors are pampered in private residences that can have their own pool and courtyard.
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Yet more than three months after the resort and more than a hundred like it reopened to extended-stay travellers in an attempt to revive Thailand’s battered economy, foreign arrivals have failed to meet even rock-bottom expectations. Just 346 overseas visitors have entered the country on average each month on special visas since October, according to the Thailand Longstay Company, which helps facilitate the programme. That’s well below the government’s target of about 1,200 and a tiny fraction of the more than 3 million who came before the pandemic.

The tepid response to Thailand’s highly publicised reopening illustrates the difficulties facing tourist-dependent countries as they try to shore up economic growth while also protecting citizens from Covid-19 before vaccines become widely available.
Thailand had hoped to lure retirees escaping the European winter and others who could stay for an extended period. They would have to go through quarantine, but that could be done in the comfort of high-end resorts in a country that had been relatively unscathed by the pandemic. After two weeks, the kingdom would be theirs to roam for as long as nine months.

The lack of interest is adding pressure on Thai policymakers, who have struggled to accommodate both industry players calling for relaxed quarantine rules and public health experts warning against putting people in danger. All the while, as the beaches stay empty, many tourism-related companies are going out of business. To make matters worse, virus cases have jumped in the country.

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