Thailand bets on Phuket sandbox program to save tourism

Phuket, Jun 30 (AP):
Somsak Betlao covered the outboard motor on his traditional wooden longtail boat with a tarp, wrapping up another day on Phuket’s Patong beach where not a single tourist needed his services shuttling them to nearby islands. Since Thailand’s pandemic restrictions on travel were imposed in early 2020, tourism has fallen off a cliff, and nowhere has it been felt more than the resort island off the country’s southern coast, where nearly 95% of the economy is related to the industry.So, despite spiking coronavirus numbers elsewhere in the country, the government is forging ahead with a program known as the ‘Phuket sandbox’ to reopen the island to fully vaccinated visitors. It hopes it will revive tourism a sector that accounted for 20% of the country’s economy before the pandemic. Instead of the hotel quarantines required elsewhere in Thailand, tourists on Phuket will be able to roam the entire island, but not travel to other parts of the country for 14 days. Skeptics question whether people will be willing to accept multiple restrictions including repeated virus tests and mandatory tracking apps, but officials hope the allure of the island’s famous beaches and the idea of a beach holiday following lengthy lockdowns will be enough.
For islanders like Somsak, there is a lot riding on the tourists’ return.
Once he could count on earning more than $100 a day taking them out on his boat, but this month he has taken home only $40 from a single customer and has been forced to do odd jobs, pawn family belongings and fish for food to put dinner on the table for his wife and two young children.
‘If it does not work we will just have to try and stay alive,’ Somsak said.
The first two months of 2020, before travel restrictions were put in place, were among Phuket’s best ever, and the island saw more than 3 million visitors in the first five months of the year, including more than 2 million foreigners. For the first five months of 2021, there have been fewer than a half million visitors, and all but about 5,000 were domestic travelers.
Under the sandbox plan, visitors to Phuket will be subject to most of the same controls faced by those to the rest of the country, but instead of being quarantined in a carefully monitored hotel room for 14 days they’ll be restricted to Thailand’s largest island, where they can lounge on the white beaches, jet ski off the coast, and enjoy evenings eating out in restaurants.
‘For people who have been closeted up in their apartments for 16 months, the idea to fly to Thailand where there’s a beach and you’re a normal guest, yes you’re being quarantined here but this is more than 500 square kilometers of quarantine and you’ve got national parks, golf courses, you can go diving it’s really not a quarantine,’ said Anthony Lark, president of the Phuket Hotels Association.
There is already some international interest, with the first flight arriving from Qatar, followed by one from Israel and then Singapore.
Still, some hotels and other businesses have decided to wait to see whether the tourists appear before they reopen, and there is skepticism in Thailand that they will.