As part of plans to stimulate a rebound in tourism, some countries have moved to waive compulsory quarantine for international travellers who have received a coronavirus vaccine.
In late March it was announced that, as of July 1, foreigners visiting the popular Thai holiday island of Phuket will be exempt from quarantine upon arrival if they have received two vaccine doses.
– As of July 1, vaccinated travellers to Phuket will be exempt from mandatory quarantine– The strategy is being combined with mass vaccinations to trigger a recovery in tourism– The plan could provide a blueprint for the successful resumption of international travel– Governments are increasingly looking towards travel bubbles and quarantine exemptionsLocal officials also stated that after one week in Phuket without showing symptoms – and testing negative – tourists would then be able to travel to the rest of the country.
A significant turnaround in Thailand’s pandemic s…Bangkok, 11 March, 2021 – The Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) has launched its latest in a series of TVCs, with the new one ‘Miss You’ sending out an emotional message to people around the world that Thailand cannot wait to welcome everyone back in the not-too-distant-future.
The TVC, while conveying a message of how much Thailand misses international visitors, also pulls at the heart strings of any viewer who is longing to return and experience the people, culture, and beaches of Thailand once again.
It starts with images of a paper airplane flying into the sunset and over a sea of mist. That fades into a stunning sunset image over Phang Nga Bay before cutting to a sequence of azure seas, colourful coral reefs, and a yacht anchored offshore at sunset.
The Thailand nostalgia tour continues with an overhead drone shot of cyclists on a winding evergreen mountain road, a woman skipping through sunflower fields in full bloom, and a …
Destinations worldwide welcomed 1 billion fewer international arrivals in 2020 than in the previous year, due to an unprecedented fall in demand and widespread travel restrictions. This compares with the 4% decline recorded during the 2009 global economic crisis.
According to the latest UNWTO World Tourism Barometer, the collapse in international travel represents an estimated loss of USD 1.3 trillion in export revenues – more than 11 times the loss recorded during the 2009 global economic crisis. The crisis has put between 100 and 120 million direct tourism jobs at risk, many of them in small and medium-sized enterprises.
Asia and the Pacific (-84%) – the first region to suffer the impact of the pandemic and the one with the highest level of travel restrictions currently in place – recorded the largest decrease in arrivals in 2020 (300 million fewer).
While much has been made in making safe international t…
In 1950, at the dawn of the jet age, just 25 million people took foreign trips. By 2019, that number had reached 1.5 billion, and the travel and tourism sector had grown to almost too-big-to-fail proportions for many economies.
The global pandemic, the first of its scale in a new era of interconnectedness, has put 100 million jobs at risk, many in micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises that employ a high share of women, who represent 54 percent of the tourism workforce, according to the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO).
Tourism-dependent countries will likely feel the negative impacts of the crisis for much longer than other economies. Contact-intensive services key to the tourism and travel sectors are disproportionately affected by the pandemic and will continue to struggle until people feel safe to travel en masse again.
“There is no way we can grow our way out of this hole we are in,” Irwin LaRocque, secretary-gener…