Gaybutton wrote: ↑Mon Aug 15, 2022 6:55 pm
For all I know, in the near future, maybe even as soon as this coming high season, there may be a far greater number of Chinese tourists going to Thailand than ever before. I believe the odds are against that and the reality will be far fewer than before. 40 million? Within the next three years? I just don't see that happening. I don't even see 10 million happening any time very soon.
For clarification, I just picked the 40 million tourists figure as a rounded off version of the 39 million that were seen pre-covid. I see no immediate risk of that with covid restrictions in some countries, plus high energy prices.
As for 2022 numbers, the most recent month for which I can see data is June, for which 0.77 million is the figure.
https://tradingeconomics.com/thailand/tourist-arrivals
Annualised, that amounts to 9.2 million, so not far off the 10 million.
However, given 5 slow months in early 2022, they will need a far higher arrivals rate in the remainder of the year to get 10 million in 2022. From a very rough interpretation of the graph, that's about 2 million tourists in the first 6 months. So they need 1.3 million per month in the second half of the year to hit 10 million in 2022.
As the Thai pass was lifted on 1 July, I wouldn't rule out some uplift in numbers ?
As for China, well they are still pursuing "zero covid" policies. Here is a recent example:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-62547503
I'm slightly surprised that their dear leader has backed off on quarantine for travel to just 10 days, however even that ought to deter tourists.
I don't know how long he will persist with this nonsense, however, obviously the Chinese vaccines are not much use and the vaccination rate amongst the elderly is low. So if they did relax restrictions, I imagine there would be a lot of deaths.
China ought to have access to mRNA vaccines, since whilst Biontech licensed their technology to Pfizer for most markets, they licensed it to a Chinese company for the Chinese market. For some reason, China has decided not to use it.
The obvious way forward is to roll out mRNA vaccines and once they have a good vaccine, find some way of persuading or coercing* the elderly to take it as well. Then drop restrictions. [*I would think the Chinese are used to coercion].
As far as I can tell, hordes of Chinese tourists are not imminent.