When foreign arrivals are predicted to reach 31 million next year, Thailand’s visa-free policy for Chinese nationals should provide “clear results,” according to the Kasikorn Research Centre.
The center said in a Friday piece that the new administration’s decision to grant Chinese visitors visa-free access will increase mainland Chinese immigration by 350,000 to 400,000 per month for the remainder of this year. Over the first eight months of this year, 280,000 Chinese tourists were arriving each month on average.
However, the study center stated that “clear results will only show in 2024, particularly during the Chinese New Year holidays.”
It stated that less than 1% of all international visitors to Thailand were from Kazakhstan, who will also be granted free access.
The report noted that this was a “new market with growth potential,” and that the visa-free policy should encourage high-spending Kazakhstani tourists to travel to Thailand.
According to the center, Thailand will have 27.6 million visitors this year, and that number will climb to 31 million the following.
The center predicted that there should be more foreign visitors to Thailand in the upcoming year “if the global economy recovers well and the government has more incentive measures.
Nearly 40 million people visited Thailand in 2019, the year before the Covid-19 pandemic began, with more than 10 million coming from China.
The Cabinet voted on Wednesday to exempt travelers from China and Kazakhstan from needing a visa during the upcoming holiday season. Visa-free travel to Thailand is available to Chinese and Kazakh nationals between September 25 and February 29. Five million more people are anticipated to visit as a result of the temporary reprieve.
According to the Tourism Authority of Thailand, nearly 2.28 million Chinese visitors and 108,636 Kazakh visitors came to Thailand between January 1 and September 10.
Despite the fact that visitors from Thailand’s major export markets including China, Laos, and Japan have decreased by more than 50% from pre-Covid levels, the Kasikorn Research Centre reported that the number of tourists arriving this year is roughly 67% of that recorded in 2019 before the pandemic.
The center cited a number of detrimental factors hurting the tourism sector, such as economic slowdowns in several important tourist destinations like China, high travel expenses, constrained flight options, and increased competition among nations vying for visit
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