The Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) aims to establish a private digital company in the next six months to support its digital transformation and help in generating 2.4 trillion baht from high-spending travellers by 2023.
Bali vs Phuket: which Asian resort island will win the race to restart international tourism? Domestic tourists arrive at Bali airport last July. Photo: AFP
While scores of countries are reintroducing border closures and travel restrictions to mitigate fresh waves of Covid-19, Southeast Asia s two most popular resort islands - Bali and Phuket - are in a race to open to international tourism.
The stakes in terms of potential benefits and risks are high. The economies of both have been on life support since the coronavirus was declared a pandemic a year ago.
In Bali, which attracted 6.3 million foreign visitors in 2019, GDP shrank 9.3 per cent year on year in 2020, while the unemployment rate of 5.6 per cent is nearly four times higher than the previous year. Phuket, which welcomed a whopping 9.9 million foreign visitors in 2019, saw its economy contract 6.1 per cent last year, and 80 per cent of its tourism-related businesses go bust.
Image: Pinterest
Thailand has launched matchmaking trips with Tinder (see: ‘the next Contiki’), luxury isolation packages and even quarantine resort stays which let you go golfing for two weeks, all in a bid to get tourists to return after ~2020~.
Few have taken the Kingdom up on its offer. Though digital nomads are fleeing to (and establishing communities in) such far-flung places as Madeira, Barbados, Berlin, Bali and Lisbon, and though many Europeans are fleeing to places like Dubai to get their winter fix of sun, Thailand hasn’t seen the same interest as various other destinations.
Per
Bloomberg, “Just 346 overseas visitors have entered the country on average each month on special visas since October, according to the Thailand Longstay Company, which helps facilitate the program. That’s well below the government’s target of about 1,200 and a tiny fraction of the more than 3 million who came before the pandemic.”
Thailand sold itself as paradise Covid retreat, yet no one came theprint.in - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from theprint.in Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Frosted Flakes: Robots Showing Empathy, Eating Noodles and a Winter Summit of K2
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Photo by AAMIR QURESHI/AFP via Getty Images
Well I’m glad the presidential transition went smoothly yesterday so I can’t focus on the big news in the outdoor/mountaineering world. Last Saturday at around 5:00 pm local time, Nimsdai Purja and a team of nine other Nepali Sherpas became the first group to complete a Winter Ascent of K2. It couldn’t happen to a more deserving group of peoples.the mountains shepherds themselves.
This feat had been attempted for years without any success. K2 is the second-highest mountain in the world at 8611 meters (28251 feet) but it is a more difficult climb than Mount Everest due to its unpredictable weather and dangerous conditions. Thousands of climbers reach the peak of Mount Everest each year but less than 400 people have reached the top of K2 in recorded history.none of them during the winter until last weekend. I dropped a couple of article