Test & Go: Testing Times for Thai Tourism but not all is Gone
Kimpton Kitalay Samui, officially opened on January 12. Luck is with it, for the Samui sandbox is open. Photo: IHG
By Raini Hamdi, January 13, 2022
Following the suspension of the Test & Go program indefinitely on January 7, Thailand’s tourism industry descends into darkness again, barely two months after it has seen light.
There is confusion, and desperation. New rules have been announced, but their details are only catching up. Industry members in Pattaya and Bangkok are calling for these cities to be included in the sandbox plan – bewildering if heeded.
It’s a real pity for Thailand’s reopening that the virus had other designs for it. The health ministry has warned that new cases could jump to 20,000 a day by end-January, from an average of 7,000 a day now.
Thailand’s popularity is a double-edged sword. It sees strong demand, but this comes with Omicron.
Most new infections of the variant are linked to visitors under the Test & Go plan, according to Thai health officials.
“Test & Go is a loophole for the virus to enter the country,” spokesperson for the Center for Covid-19 Situation Administration (CCSA), Taweesilp Visanuyothin, was quoted as saying in local media.
Of 416,160 foreign arrivals last year, most were between November 1 when Test & Go started, and December 22 when the program was first suspended, according to CCSA data. Actual arrival figures for November and December aren’t available but there were reports of 350,000 visitors in the two months.
Calculated Risks
While Test & Go is on hold, the government’s move to keep the Phuket sandbox open and extend it to three other southern islands, shows it is willing to take some calculated risks, and not seal off borders as before. Tourism contributed US$60 billion in 2019 – 11 percent of GDP – and the government has been losing this revenue for nearly two years while spending money to get locals to travel domestically.
From January 11, foreign visitors can effectively enjoy quarantine-free stays in Krabi, Phang Nga and Surat Thani (Samui, Koh Phangan and Koh Tao). As with the Phuket sandbox, guests can go anywhere on the island, and elsewhere after a week’s stay.
Details were released on January 11 on how passengers could arrive in the sandboxes: To Phuket, it must be by direct flight, no transit in Bangkok. To Phang-Nga and Krabi, via direct flight to Phuket, then by car to the destinations. To Samui, transfer in Bangkok but the journey must be on one ticket, eg, Europe-Bangkok-Samui. The latter has its limitations as Bangkok Airways, the main airline to Samui and whose parent company owns the airport, has interlining with only some carriers.
But uncertainties and complications do not deter some tourists from coming. Phuket Tourism Association on January 11 said the island is getting more than 4,000 applications a day. Applicants are mainly from Germany, Russia, Kazakhstan, the UK, the US and France.
This compares with less than 1,000 foreign arrivals daily for most of the sandbox last year, which started on July 1.
What Windfall?
But Phuket isn’t having a windfall. In 2019, Phuket Airport welcomed more than 20,000 foreign arrivals a day.
“Windfall is perhaps the wrong term, it’s more like subsistence,” said Bill Barnett, managing director C9 Hotelworks, based in Phuket. “The sandbox just helped hotel owners lose less money, it was not a return to profit. At least it paid some of the bills and prevented hotels from firing all staff and close.”
The majority of arrivals last year were Russians, who couldn’t use Test & Go as Russia is not an approved country for the scheme. Others were Thai expats and business travelers who used the sandbox to re-enter Thailand without quarantine, said Barnett.
“The Russians will be mostly gone by March or April at the latest. After that, it’s mostly a domestic play – Thai school holidays and Songkran,” said Barnett.
Unlike Test & Go, which can jumpstart mass tourism, the sandbox is, as Barnett says, “a proof of concept for restarting tourism”.
Phuket is learning to cope with a surge in daily cases that comes with an increase in arrivals, for instance, introducing new solutions such as using hotels to isolate Covid cases. There were 468 new cases on January 10.
“For now, Phuket hotels and tourism businesses have to work with the government and modify processes on the fly to keep the country open,” said Barnett. “The hotel sector is in a dire condition and there will have to be economic incentives in 2022 for it.”
So is the rest of the industry, which is struggling.
But it is hard to imagine Thailand extending the sandbox to Bangkok and Pattaya.
“The point of the sandbox is to restrict travelers to a certain area. Hence, islands are the best for it. How on earth can you control travelers in Bangkok or Pattaya – it makes zero sense,” said Barnett. “I have absolute sympathy for Bangkok and Pattaya hotels but the only answer for them is a return of Test and Go as soon as practically possible.”
Proof of Popularity
The whole Thai industry, which has seen how Test & Go is proof of Thailand’s popularity, is hoping it will be greenlighted soon.
“Figures for December alone were the same as the previous 11 months,” said Asian Trails Group chairman Luzi Matzig. “Now things have collapsed again. I hope they restart Test & Go by the end of January.”
The opportunity cost is the rest of the peak season, which could be life and death for many businesses. If just over 400,000 foreign visitors had arrived in 2021, as the CCSA figure suggests, that’s a fraction of the 40 million arrivals in 2019. Moreover, the industry does not enjoy “efficient furlough schemes unlike countries in Europe, the US or nearby Singapore”, said Diethelm Travel Group’s director of sales & marketing, Victor Mogilev.
Centara Hotels & Resorts’ deputy CEO, Markland Blaiklock, is thankful the sandbox is running in Phuket, Samui and Krabi. This will “likely yield occupancies of 30 to 50 percent” in those locations, he said.
“At these levels, the situation is manageable on a short-term basis. Hopefully business will bounce back by the second quarter, (depending on) the state of global and Thai cases. Raising the global level of vaccination will remain a preoccupation of all governments,” said Blaiklock.
Agreeing, David Linde, general manager, Destination Asia Thailand, said the sandbox keeps some doors ajar for travel, however limited the numbers may be.
“However, without the full removal of quarantine measures for vaccinated passengers, international travelers will continue to think twice about coming to Thailand for the foreseeable future, especially with the lack of clarity and administrative workload they currently have to navigate,” he said.