Update. Phuket for all the vaccinated travellers. How many visited?
When Phuket announced their plan to open the island to all vaccinated tourists to visit, I think many vaccinated tourists / travellers were happy that they could finally enjoy a vacation in an exotic island. In case many did not know, there are many developed nations which has already reached 50% full vaccinations even in June 2021. So there’s already a huge group of potential customers for Phuket’s Sandbox programme.
Results after 1 month?
So, how was the result after 1 month? Pretty good. In fact over 15,000 of them visited Phuket within July 2021. That’s roughly 500 tourist arrivals per day. If we assume all of them stay in a room for two, then they would have occupied a total of 7,500 hotel rooms! If every hotel has on average 100 rooms, these tourists have helped 94 hotels to achieve 80% occupancy! I think this is a good result. Kudos to Phuket for trying this.
I do wonder which island in Malaysia can get approval to try something like this.
Article in bangkokpost.com As of Monday, 15,169 tourists visited Phuket under the sandbox scheme, which began on July 1, bringing in revenue totalling 818 million baht. (RM104 million). Nanthasiri Ronsiri, director of the Tourism Authority of Thailand’s Phuket office shared the following information.
By nationality, the Americans made up the largest group, followed by the visitors from the United Kingdom, Israel, Germany and France, respectively. Before the Covid pandemic, Phuket was home to 1,900 hotels, with 140,000 rooms in total. At present, 378-400 hotels are operating, with a combined 30,000 rooms. Please do read the article in Bangkokpost.com with more details.
Tourists are aplenty, now it’s only how to attract them
ASEAN wise, except for Singapore and Malaysia, most countries are still at a low double digit or even single digit when it comes to vaccinations. This meant that any travel bubble even within ASEAN may have to wait a little longer. However, look at Europe and we suddenly have a huge group of potential travellers who may need to do some revenge travelling. It’s how we attract them.
We can see clearly that all the tourists came from countries where vaccinations have long exceeded 50% since June 2021. Oh yeah, I do wonder why they only stay 11 nights at hotels. Haha. They are supposed to be there for 14 days.
Anyway, Phuket has proven that this can be done. It may or may not have hit all that they have targeted but just achieving what they achieve; 15,000 tourists in one month, that is already super amazing. Yes, I will definitely be flying to any island in Malaysia offering something similar. As long as I know I am in the company of the vaccinated, I do feel safe enough.
By the way, there’s not going to be a total zero cases of Covid-19 for a very long time to come. None of the current vaccines can prevent infections but they can still prevent hospitalisations very well. Happy understanding and if you happen to be in Phuket as you read this, please say Hi!
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