Malaysians and Indians will help Thailand beat its tourism goal

Before the pandemic, Chinese tourists made up the largest group of foreign visitors to Thailand. But because China keeps enforcing its Covid-zero policy, the vast majority of Chinese tourists who went to the kingdom can’t come back. The High Season in Thailand is from November to April when the weather is thought to be the best. Since High Season started a week ago, immigration inspectors at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport have struggled with the number of travelers. There are now 112 immigration booths at the airport, up from 92. During peak travel times, there will be an agent at each booth. Commander of Immigration of Division 2, Major General Choengron Rimphade, says that the airport can handle about 6,500 people an hour without putting safety at risk. Thailand is on track to reach its goal of 10 million tourists by the end of the year. This is because Malaysia and India are sending more tourists to Thailand. Since the beginning of 2022, Thailand has gotten more than a million tourists from Malaysia and more than 600,000 tourists from India. The Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) recently released data showing that 7.56 million tourists came to Thailand between January 1, 2022, and October 26, 2022. The TAT set a goal of 10 million tourists from other countries visiting Thailand by the end of the year.
Now that the High Season has started, Thailand’s Government Spokesperson Anucha Burapachaisri said on Saturday that the country might get 1.5 million international tourists every month in November and December. Most of these visitors will come from Malaysia and India. This year, more than one-seventh of all visitors to the kingdom came from Malaysia. Almost a million Malaysian tourists came to the kingdom. So far this year, more than 600,000 Indians have come. This puts them in second place. Anucha says that flights from India and Malaysia to Thailand are 85% full in November and 68.5% full in December. There is a good chance that Thailand will have more than 10 million tourists this year. Even so, there are still less than a quarter as many as there were before the pandemic. In 2019, Thailand had almost 40 million tourists from other countries. This brought in about $60 million USD from tourism. The Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) thinks that the country will have about 18 million foreign visitors in 2019, which is about half of what it had before the pandemic. They also believe that the country will make about 970 billion baht, which is about US$26 billion, from tourism.