Picture: Thai Rath
Thai Rath reported that the authorities in Pattaya were pressing ahead with the "Pattaya Move On" reopening to foreign tourism come September despite Covid-19 infections being severe in the country at the moment.
Chonburi tourism business association president and local councillor Thanet Supharothatrangsi said that there was still two months to go and they needed to press ahead.
He said that plans would be presented to the Chonburi governor on July 19th and thereafter to the CCSA where Thai PM Prayuth-Chan-ocha and ministers would discuss matters.
Right now the plan is being called "Sealed Route Bubble&Seal 3-3-8".
Here's what that means.
First off visitors from abroad must have been double vaxxed, have a CoE from a foreign embassy and have had a negative Covid-19 test within 72 hours of departure.
On arrival they will be tested again.
Then they must spend the first six days in an approved ALQ hotel.
On the fourth day they will be tested again. Days one to three they must stay in quarantine in the hotel.
Days four to six they can leave the hotel so long as they are in the sealed route area.
Day six they have yet another test.
If all is OK they can then spend days 8-14 at a SHA+ approved hotel though they must stick to the sealed area.
After that they would be good to go elsewhere.
Thanet said there are 19 approved ALQ hotels in Bang Lamung and Sattahip offering 2,000 rooms.
SHA+ has 40 approved hotels offering 4,000 rooms.
He didn't expect many tourists in September.
But he did by November.
He said that the target was to get 20% of the visitors and revenue based on the whole of the pre-pandemic year of 2019.
Then 18.6 million domestic Thai tourists and foreigners visited spending 276,328 billion baht.
ASEAN Now did the math. To hit the target (assuming that tourism so far this year has been minimal) there would need to be 3.7 million tourists before the end of the year.
And they would need to spend 55.2 billion baht.
