Pattaya officials hope the city will be next in line if international tourists are allowed to visit Phuket.
The Tourism Authority of Thailand and Tourism and Sports Ministry officials have been promoting a so-called “Phuket Model” of allowing long-stay tourists to begin arriving in Phuket in October, but the plan, at this point, is just talk. Nothing has been approved and no tourists as of now are returning to Thailand anytime soon.
Tourists would be required to stay at least 14 days, all of which time would be spent in “alternative state quarantine” at a luxury hotel. Visitors would be unable to leave Phuket for 21 days and also would have to have multiple Covid-19 tests, obtain a raft of hard-to-get documents and obtain a massive insurance policy.
With those restrictions, the likelihood of mass tourism is slim-to-none.
Still, Pattaya officials and businesses are desperate, so they hope Pattaya could be next in line for such a scheme, even though the entire reason Phuket was proposed was because it is an island that can easily be closed off if an outbreak of Covid-19 occurs. The same cannot be said of Pattaya.
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