The View | Thailand’s ‘Phuket Sandbox’ scheme is a ray of hope for Asia’s tourism industry
- The pilot scheme sends an important signal for the rest of Thailand and other resort markets
- When Asia’s zero-tolerance policy is proving unworkable, the sandbox scheme recognises that a new approach is needed towards an increasingly endemic virus
Foreign tourist arrivals – which accounted for 70 per cent of Thailand’s tourism receipts before the pandemic struck – fell by a staggering 83 per cent year on year last year, data from consultancy Horwath HTL shows.
This caused the hotel sector’s occupancy rate to plummet from 70 per cent in 2019 to 29.5 per cent. In Phuket, the nation’s largest tourist island, occupancy dropped to just 19.5 per cent.
The Delta variant has dashed hopes of a recovery this year. A 99 per cent fall in international tourist arrivals in the first half of 2021 has deprived Thailand of a crucial source of foreign exchange, pushing the current account balance into negative territory and causing the Thai baht to lose 11 per cent against the US dollar since late February.
To be sure, the fierce resurgence of the pandemic across the Asia-Pacific region has hit all markets hard, including those such as mainland China and Japan that can rely on domestic tourism.
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