China News Agency, Bangkok, January 25 (Reporter Wang Guoan) The Ministry of Tourism and Sports of Thailand stated on the 25th that due to the impact of the new crown pneumonia epidemic, in 2020, Thailand has only 6.7 million inbound tourists, a year-on-year decrease of about 83%.
Thailand began to implement a state of emergency order in late March last year and banned international flights. Since then, the number of inbound tourists has been almost zero.
In order to boost the tourism industry, Thailand launched a "special tourist visa" measure in October last year to allow qualified long-term foreign tourists to enter the country, but this measure has little effect. In the last quarter of last year, Thailand had only 10,800 inbound tourists.
Due to lack of tourists, many travel agencies and hotels in Thailand went bankrupt and closed.
To this end, the Thai government has adopted various measures including subsidies, hoping to help the tourism industry tide over the difficulties.
Since the middle of last month, a new round of epidemics broke out in Thailand, which has made the local tourism industry worse. Not only has the restoration of inbound tourism become more distant, but even domestic tourism has entered a "frozen" state again.
The director of the National Tourism Administration of Thailand, Yuthasar, said on the 25th that the new round of the epidemic is expected to cause an average of 46 billion baht (approximately 9.9 billion yuan) losses to the Thai tourism industry a month.
If the epidemic continues for a quarter, the damage will be as high as 130 billion baht.
According to the assessment of the bureau, the tourism industry in Thailand is expected to begin to recover in the third quarter of this year. It is optimistic that it can receive 10 million foreign tourists throughout the year.
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