Thailand reinstates quarantine for foreign visitors

Thailand has reinstated its mandatory Covid-19 quarantine for foreign visitors and scrap a quarantine waiver from today (Tuesday 21st) due to concerns over the spread of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus.
The decision to halt Thailand’s ‘Test and Go’ waiver means visitors will have to undergo hotel quarantine, which ranges between 7 to 10 days.

Meanwhile, a so-called “sandbox” programme, which requires visitors to remain in a specific location but allows them free movement outside of their accommodation, will also be suspended in all places except for the tourist resort island of Phuket.

“After December 21, there will be no new registrations for ‘Test and Go’, only quarantine or Phuket sandbox,” said deputy government spokeswoman Rachada Dhanadirek.

The announcement came a day after Thailand reported the first case of local transmission of the Omicron variant.

It also came weeks after Thailand reopened to foreign visitors in November, ending nearly 18 months of strict entry policies that contributed to a collapse in tourism, a key industry and economic driver that drew 40 million visitors in 2019.

About 200,000 visitors who had previously registered for the quarantine waiver and sandbox programme will still be eligible, said government spokesman Thanakorn Wangboonkongchana.

“This is not to shut off tourists but to temporarily suspend arrivals,” he said.

The decision will be reviewed on January 4, he added.

Source - BangkokJack

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Thai Government outlines 7 conditions of quarantine-free re-opening

As the grand re-opening date of November 1 approaches, with little clarity as to what that will look like, here’s some of what we know – and what we don’t. According to a Thai PBS World report, the government has outlined 7 conditions that will determine if someone can enter the kingdom quarantine-free. The following conditions have been communicated by the Bureau of Risk Communication and Health Behaviour Promotion, part of the Disease Control Department.

1. Foreign visitors must arrive by air and come from a list of “low-risk” countries approved by the Public Health Ministry

2. Have proof of vaccination with 2 doses of a recognised Covid-19 vaccine

3. Have a negative PCR test result taken within 72 hours of departure from your home country

4. Have at least US$50,000 in Covid-19 insurance coverage

5. Have proof of a hotel booking

6. Travellers must download the Mor Chana app and take a second PCR test on arrival or within 24 hours of arrival

7. If the second test is negative, visitors can continue their journey without any further quarantine

However, with just over 10 days to go, a number of things remain unknown. Chief among them is the list of “low-risk” countries, as well as the rules for vaccinated adults travelling with unvaccinated children. Clarity is also needed on whether travellers need proof of a hotel booking beyond their first night in the kingdom and if this applies to expats with homes here. Furthermore, Thai embassies continue to advise people to book quarantine hotels, insisting they’ve received no communication about the re-opening process.

Thai PBS World reports that the government is moving to a 3-model approach for admitting foreign arrivals. The first – and original – model is that unvaccinated visitors will be subject to mandatory hotel quarantine for between 7 and 14 days. The second model is the sandbox model currently in operation in Phuket, Samui and other tourist destinations, which is being extended to several other provinces. The third model will be the quarantine-free model discussed above.

SOURCE: Thai PBS World

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#Vietnam eyes tourism revival with select openings for foreign visitors

Vietnam’s tourism industry is preparing different plans to welcome foreign visitors from countries and territories that have contained the coronavirus pandemic.

Nguyen Trung Khanh, director of the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT), said the industry is preparing plans to welcome visitors from countries and territories that have responded effectively to the pandemic.

Tourism officials will submit to the government a schedule for gradually easing visa restrictions and resuming some international flight routes, Khanh told VnExpress.

Though Vietnam's Covid-19 situation remains under control as the country has gone 36 days without any coronavirus cases caused by community transmission, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc late last week ordered to continue with tough measures to prevent infections from abroad.

Phuc, however, asked the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism to coordinate with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and submit to the government a reopening plan for international tourists.

More than a month after the government relaxed social distancing restrictions, Vietnam remains closed to foreign arrivals, with rare exceptions.

Reopening scenarios

Khanh said in case the pandemic is contained by September in some key source markets, VNAT will propose relaxing restrictions and the re-launching of promotions to attract visitors from these markets. "If this happens, Southeast and Northeast Asia will be the first markets to be targeted by VNAT’s promotion programs in the fourth quarter."

He said this would require a mechanism for mutual validation of medical control standards with other countries.

If the pandemic lasts until the end of the year, VNAT will consider other options, he added, without elaborating.

The tourism administration stated that it was preparing plans to welcome foreign tourists in anticipation of recovery and disease control in key markets like South Korea, mainland China, Japan, Taiwan and several ASEAN members.

Ken Atkinson, vice chairman of the Vietnam Tourism Advisory Board, said the first countries to target could be Australia and New Zealand, which are responding well to the Covid-19 crisis.

"However, as China and Korea are our two biggest inbound source markets it is important to have plans in place to reopen travel from those markets as soon as it is safe," he said.

Atkinson told at a tourism meeting Thursday that Vietnam can consult Australia, New Zealand, and Thailand on opening separate resorts for foreign tourists to ensure their safety.

William Haandrikman, general manager of Sofitel Legend Metropole Hanoi, said Asian markets were likely to be the first to recover.

In the meantime, "we have had to re-invent ourselves to focus directly on the local domestic market as well as regional Asian markets," he noted.

Partial resumption of flights

At Thursday’s tourism meeting, local carriers Vietnam Airlines, Vietjet Air and Bamboo Airways expressed their hopes of resuming international flights. The international tourist market accounts for around 50 percent of their revenues.

Earlier, the Civil Aviation Administration of Vietnam (CAAV) had proposed a partial lifting of the suspension on international flights starting June 1, with limited frequency, giving priority to foreign experts and investors, while ensuring strict maintenance of anti-pandemic measures.

With an international flight ban in place, Vietnam saw a 38 percent year-on-year drop in the number of January-April foreign visitors to 3.7 million, accompanied by corresponding 45 percent drop in tourism revenues to VND7.9 trillion ($337 million).

Pandemic success model

Vietnam has garnered international praise as a "successful model" in tackling the Covid-19 pandemic and some media sections have promoted the country as "a safe destination post Covid-19 pandemic."

The country has led the way in protecting its citizens from the coronavirus, and not a single death has been reported, Matt Young, secretary of the Australian Chamber of Commerce in Vietnam (AusCham), noted in an interview with Australian news channel 7News.

Young called on Australians to visit Vietnam when it’s possible, calling the country a safe, hospitable country with several stunning landscapes. "Tourism is very important for the economy and (Vietnam is) a beautiful country. It will be great to see Australians back in Vietnam," he said.

New York-based travel magazine Travel + Leisure included only Vietnam and the Philippines from Southeast Asia in a recent listing of 17 must-to-go destinations in the world after the Covid-19 crisis ends.

Survey results released earlier this month by Thailand-headquartered hospitality consulting group C9 Hotelworks and communication firm Delivering Asia Communications showed that nearly half of surveyed Chinese travelers said they plan to travel overseas during the remainder of 2020 if the pandemic is contained, and 45 percent of these said Vietnam would feature on their list.

While Vietnam is expected to become one of the first Southeast Asian nations to kickoff its economic revival, the continued ban on foreign visitors has prompted the local industry to focus on promoting domestic tourism.

A tourism promotion campaign called "Vietnamese People Travel in Vietnam" debuted last week, aiming to "introduce quality tourism products and service packages at reasonable prices."

The move puts Vietnam ahead of its regional tourism competitors such as Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines, where travel restrictions are only starting to lift.

Vietnam's popular tourist destinations have reopened. The government has recently allowed most non-essential services except karaoke parlors and discos to resume operation.

The country's count of active Covid-19 cases has been 58 as 266 have recovered after treatment.

Source VN Express

#Vietnam continues to attract record numbers of foreign visitors

More than 7 million foreigners visited Vietnam in January-May, attesting to the country’s rising popularity as a tourism destination.

Vietnam welcomed 7.3 million arrivals during January-May, up 8.8 percent from a year ago, putting the country on track to meet its annual target of receiving 18 million foreigners this year, according to the General Statistics Office.

Most foreign visitors arrived by air, accounting for over 80 percent of the total.

Tourism officials have attributed the increase in numbers to international tourists spending their summer breaks during Vietnam's festival season, marked by many cultural events organized across the country.

Most of the foreign tourists were from Asia, with the numbers rising 10 percent year-on-year to 5.6 million, accounting for 76.8 percent of the total.

Despite a slight decrease of 0.8 percent, China remained the biggest source of visitors with nearly 2.1 million, followed by South Korea, the second biggest market, which recorded a 22.4 percent increase to nearly 1.7 million.

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 Neighboring Thailand topped the growth of foreign tourist arrivals in the first five months of this year at a whopping 47.5 percent year-on-year, reaching 215,000.

The recent launch of direct flights connecting Vietnam’s top tourist destinations like Da Nang, Nha Trang and Da Lat with Thailand’s tourism hubs has pushed this growth, market observers said.

The number of tourists from European market grew by six percent from a year ago.

While Vietnam is the midst of a tourism boom with a record high of 15.5 million foreign arrivals in 2018, a year-on-year rise of 20 percent, the numbers have remained lower than that of neighboring countries in the region.

Thailand (38 million), Malaysia (25 million) and Singapore (18.5 million) remain far ahead of Vietnam,

At a National Assembly session last year Deputy Prime Minister Vuong Dinh Hue said the country needs to stop relying on crude oil and focus on tourism to sustain its economic growth.

"It's better to get one million tourists than try to find one million tons of crude oil because tourism is more eco-friendly and safe for the economy," Hue said.

Many travel agencies have said that Vietnam should further relax its visa policies and simplify procedures to attract high spending tourists from Japan, North America, Northern Europe, China and South Korea.

They have called for the current 15-day visa exemption extended to 30 days.

Source - VN EXPRESS

Indonesia - Tomini Bay festival attracts domestic, foreign tourists

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The 2017 Pesona Teluk Tomini (Tomini Bay Charms) Festival that was held in Parigi Moutong regency, Central Sulawesi, came to an end on Sunday.

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The nine-day festival that kicked off on April 1 started with an international marathon, the Equator 10km, which was participated in by runners from three countries. A Kenyan took first place in the competition.

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Apart from the marathon, the event also featured music performances, a beauty pageant, a craft exhibition, a painting competition and a culinary festival.

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One of the highlighted cuisines during the festival was lalampa, a traditional delicacy made of glutinous rice filled with cakalang fish filling and wrapped in banana leaf. Last year, this dish broke an Indonesia Museum of Records (MURI) record for having the largest number of participants cooking it.

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 “The aim of this event is to showcase how the Equator monument was used for an international marathon. Hopefully the participants would tell how wonderful the monument is when they go back to their respective countries,” said Parigi Moutong Regent Samsurizal Tombolotutu.

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During the festival, the regent also commemorated the departure of several traditional sailboats from Moutong district and their arrival at Kayu Bura Beach, the venue for the festival’s finale. At the closing event, which was supported by the Tourism Ministry, a fashion carnival was held and attended by 100 participants, including foreign visitors.

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Parigi Moutong Tourism Agency head Hamka Lagala said that the region welcomed a total of 383,587 domestic and 3,432 foreign visitors last year. This year, it has set a target to attract at least 400,000 domestic and 5,000 foreign tourists.

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Source - TheJakartaPost

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