Thailand’s tourism leaders have hailed the experimental reopening of the holiday island of Phuket as an early success even as the rest of the Southeast Asian nation struggles against its deadliest Covid-19 surge of the pandemic.
The so-called “Phuket Sandbox” launched on July 1 to allow fully vaccinated tourists from low to medium risk countries to visit without mandatory quarantine. After staying in Phuket for at least 14 days they are allowed to visit other Thai destinations.
By vaccinating about 70 per cent of the island’s population, and all hospitality workers, Phuket is operating as a mini-oasis. Industry and government chiefs hope it will be a model to revive the sector and the country’s economy, gradually allowing more tourism hotspots to welcome foreign guests back.
Most of Thailand is suffering from a sluggish vaccination programme and record-breaking cases, with an average of 7,600 new infections a day in the past week.
But the dependence of at least seven million workers on tourism, which contributes to about 20 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product, has left the government with little choice but to start taking calculated risks to ease open the borders. Other Southeast Asian nations are watching closely.
On Thursday, Siripakorn Cheawsamoot, deputy governor of the Tourism Authority of Thailand, said the Sandbox scheme had had a “very good start,” helped by high vaccination rates and very low numbers of local infections.
“The good thing is that the destination is safe. The community vaccination has already reached the standards of herd immunity,” he told a tourism industry webinar.
“We keep monitoring on the restrictions... we need to prove to everyone, to the local people, to the international tourists to come and see by their own eyes that Phuket is safe to everyone.”
By Thursday, 5,473 had flown into Phuket under the strict terms of the Sandbox. The largest number of arrivals have come from the United States, with the UK, United Arab Emirates, Israel and Germany all in the top five.
But the authorities and hotel owners have admitted to early hiccups, including onerous paperwork and a tiny number of infections among arrivals.
Travellers must provide a negative PCR test before departure, test on arrival and then seven days later. To date, ten positive cases have been identified through the screening process, which has also impacted those deemed to be close contacts.
Stefanie Korenyi, a German translator, who seized the opportunity to visit Phuket after 18 months of being cooped up at home by a pandemic lockdown, had just settled by the pool to enjoy the first day of her stay at the Rawai Palm Beach resort, when her phone rang.
“I got a call from the receptionist telling me that I’m a high-risk contact and that I should immediately report to her,” she said.
She was told the man who was sitting next to her on the second leg of the flight from Dubai to Phuket had tested positive on arrival at the airport.
“I was devastated…the chances that this might happen were so small and I was like ‘why me?’” she told the Telegraph from her room in a less glamourous quarantine hotel.
Ms Korenyi said she had been left in the dark about what to do next when she got the news, and it was the hotel receptionist rather than a local official who found her a place to stay for her 14-day quarantine.
“These are the teething problems of the Sandbox, but it is a completely new pilot project,” she said. “Everybody is happy about tourists arriving and they are trying their best and are really nice and helpful.”
Ms Korenyi remains upbeat. After selling her possessions at home, landing in Phuket was the first step of her plan to travel indefinitely through Southeast Asia, and she still has time to enjoy the island.
She said she would opt again for the Sandbox experiment but might reconsider if she just had two weeks of holiday. “If you happen to be in a case like mine then you would be locked up for the whole holiday although the risk is very low. I was just very unlucky,” she said.
Covid-19 infections made up less than one per cent of arrivals so far, stressed Bhummikitti Ruktaengam, president of the Phuket Tourist Association, on Thursday’s webinar. “We never said that we were going to have zero infected people, but to find only ten from 5,000 looks very good to us.”
He said the island was optimistic it could receive an estimated 30,000 arrivals by August, and that restrictions could eventually be eased to reduce the 14-day mandatory stay to share business with other popular islands. Koh Samui, Koh Phangan and Koh Tao are also starting to quietly reopen.
Some business travellers were already using the scheme as an easier entry into the country, he revealed.
“If I want to measure the success of the Sandbox so far, in the first two weeks, I would say we are doing very well in terms of trying to build, bit by bit, the confidence of international travellers.”
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