The Thai Hotels Association applauded plans to focus on vaccinating tourism industry workers against the coronavirus to give foreign visitors confidence.
Eastern Region President Phisut Sae-khu said March 5 that the government would distribute another 500,000 vaccine doses to five tourism-dependent provinces: Chonburi, Chiang Mai, Phuket, Surat Thani and Krabi.
He figured at least 60 percent of tourism-sector workers will need to be vaccinated to be effective in restarting foreign tourism.
However, all the vaccines in the world will not help the industry if the government continues to insist that all foreign arrivals endure 14 days of quarantine. He said tourists simply will go to countries like Egypt, Turkey and the Maldives where quarantine is not required.
Phisut urged the government to adopt so-called “vaccine passports” to allow completely vaccinated tourists to be exempted from quarantine.
