Thailand looks to allow entry to some foreigners, including medical tourists from China
- Thailand intends to open its borders to 50,000 visitors, including medical and wellness tourists, under a scheme that includes a 14-day quarantine
- The country’s medical tourism industry is ranked fourth in the world for value, and has attracted an increasing number of Chinese, especially for IVF
Thailand has banned international flights since April but intends to permit 50,000 foreigners, including those with work permits, residency and families in the country, through its borders under a scheme that would include 14-day mandatory quarantine upon arrival.
About 30,000 of these foreigners would be medical and wellness tourists such as those seeking cosmetic surgery or fertility treatment, said Taweesilp Visanuyothin, spokesman of the Centre for Covid-19 Situation Administration.
Business visitors from Japan, South Korea, Singapore, mainland China and Hong Kong could also be exempted from a two-week quarantine period under a fast track entry if they have certificates to show they were free from Covid-19 and were tested upon arrival.
The head of Thailand’s national tourism agency Yuthasak Supasorn said the details were dependent on the length of the visitors’ stay. The place and duration of their quarantine, and their health insurance and tracking system, would also have to be declared.
“The government prioritises safety. It also prioritises countries that effectively curbed the coronavirus pandemic, but we also have to take economic relations into account,” said Yuthasak.
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Thailand is seeking to restart its tourism industry and boost its economy after they were devastated by the government’s coronavirus lockdown and travel restrictions. The Bank of Thailand last week revised growth down to -8.1 per cent, lower than the 7.6 per cent contraction during the 1997 Asian financial crisis.
Tourism accounts for some 18 per cent of Thailand’s GDP, raking in 2.9 trillion baht (US$93.8 billion) in revenue. This is expected to be slashed by 60 per cent this year, said Yuthasak.
There were 39.7 million foreign arrivals in 2019, including about 10.9 million Chinese visitors, who contributed around 28 per cent of the tourism revenue, according to tourism authorities.
Last week, the Thai government said the travel bubble policy should kick off in August, with mainland China and Japan poised to become the first two countries to implement it.
“We might have to ascertain China on the province-by-province basis. Some provinces might be given priority,” said Yuthasak. This came after a 400,000 residents in China’s northern Hebei province were placed under lockdown over the weekend following an outbreak of 13 Covid-19 cases reportedly linked to the Xinfadi market cluster in Beijing, where there was a fresh outbreak two weeks ago.
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Thira Woratanarat, an epidemiologist at Chulalongkorn University, said Thailand should wait at least three months before allowing foreign visitors to enter, to ensure the country is ready for a “high-risk situation”.
“Thailand should fully lift lockdown first and implement a follow-up phase for two to four weeks,” he posted on Facebook. “Then domestic travel should be encouraged to ensure the situation is stable and that the country is ready for the high level of risk, all depending on the state of the global pandemic, which if severe, a postponement is needed.”
Yuthasak said the Medical and Wellness Resort of the World tourism campaign is also in the works. The plan is set to draw on the strength of Thailand’s US$600 million medical tourism sector following the country’s success in curbing the pandemic.
“We have to think about what is our selling point post-coronavirus, and Thailand has already been successful on medical tourism and wellness,” he said.
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The country is expecting to see around 1 million medical tourists per year in the next two years, up from the current 300,000 – 500,000 annually.
Yuthasak said medical tourists spent US$1,700 on average per trip, but families who tag along added to tourism revenues.
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The industry is currently tapping into the Chinese market after an increase in recent years in people wanting in vitro fertilisation (IVF), said Nattapon Wuttirakajorn, an economic analyst at GSB Research.
“Chinese account for 80 per cent of foreigners seeking IVF services in Thailand. They have the confidence to seek the treatment in Thailand because of the high rate of successful cases in IVF,” he said.
IVF treatment in Thailand is comparatively affordable at US$4,100. Prices in South Korea and Singapore last year were quoted at US$7,900 and US$14,900 respectively, according to a medical tourism website.
Several private hospitals in the country have also coordinated with tour operators to include a day of health check-ups in tour itineraries for Chinese travellers, Nattapon said, including treatments for anti-ageing.
Thai hospitals have also cooperated with doctors on the mainland, asking them to represent the institutions and recommend or transfer the patients to the country, “especially for advanced surgical treatments like neurosurgeries”, he said.
Thailand’s success in curbing the Covid-19 pandemic should create higher confidence among international patients in Thailand’s health care system.
Thailand’s medical sector largely provided services to patients from the Middle East in the past decade as a result of support from their governments to transfer them to the country, but this changed in recent years after several Gulf states such as Kuwait positioned themselves as medical hubs. As the baht strengthened last year, Thailand started to see more patients from mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, thanks in part to its proximity.
“Thailand’s competitive edge is affordable costs and living expenses. Some patients who received long-haul treatment chose Thailand because it was comparatively cheaper and provided more opportunity for sightseeing for them and their family,” Nattapon said.
He cautioned that while the pandemic could affect the spending power of medical tourists in general, it is easier to revive medical tourism compared to wellness products like massage, because the industry is already more aligned to the new safety guidelines post-coronavirus.
“Thailand’s success in curbing the Covid-19 pandemic should create higher confidence among international patients in Thailand’s health care system,” said Dr Adisorn Patradul, director of World Medical Hospital, a private hospital near Bangkok that caters mostly to patients from the Middle East, China, Australia and Myanmar.
As with several other hospitals catering to foreign patients, World Medical offers residential packages for family members of patients who travel with them, at competitive rates. The packages are particularly in demand among those who stay for between three and six months at a time, receiving treatment for conditions such as diabetes, said Adisorn.
The number of patients from China at World Medical has grown in recent years because hospitals in the mainland are often overwhelmed, Adisorn added.
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There are almost 400 private hospitals in Thailand and ones that cater to foreigners are usually located in tourist spots like Bangkok, Pattaya and Phuket.
Thailand’s health care standard is internationally recognised. It ranked sixth in the Global Health Security Index 2019, becoming one of the two Asian nations in the top 10, with South Korea ranked ninth.
Looking past the pandemic, the country is also pushing ahead with a 290 billion baht (US$9.4 billion) “airport city” aimed at creating a destination for travel and manufacturing, according to the head of the project.
The plan is to expand U-Tapao International Airport in Rayong Province, where much of Thailand’s automotive and petrochemical companies have plants and factories. In recent years, the airport brought in tourists from places such as China and Russia to the seaside city of Pattaya.
“It’ll be the core of a new growth centre and a hub for logistics and tourism,” said Kanit Sangsubhan, secretary general of the Eastern Economic Corridor Office, which oversees the project spanning 1,040 hectares (2,570 acres). When completed, it will handle 60 million passengers and 3 million tons of cargo yearly, making U-Tapao one of the nation’s three largest airports.
U-Tapao was originally developed in the mid-1960s to support the US military during the Vietnam war.
An initial phase of the redevelopment is due for completion by 2024, giving the aviation hub some “insulation” from the coronavirus-induced economic crisis and collapse of foreign tourism, Kanit said in an interview.
However, a challenge is to get businesses to buy into the idea of a new aviation and logistics hub for Southeast Asia.
“The building of infrastructure is easy, but the hard part will be bringing companies and investment to the area,” said Manoj Lohatepanont, director of Chulalongkorn University Transportation Institute in Bangkok.
Other planned features include a free-trade zone, an aviation maintenance centre and headquarters for e-commerce and logistics companies. A high-speed train system is being built to connect the airport with Pattaya and Bangkok, about three hours drive away.
Additional reporting by Reuters, Bloomberg
