COMMENTARY: You start to realise that very often, people want you to talk about it. They just don t know how to broach it. Banyan Tree Holdings co-founder and executive chairman Ho Kwon Ping shares his insights on the art of conversation, especially when it involves difficult and taboo topics like death and suffering.
As part of Lessons on Leadership, a series hoping to inspire the next generation of Singaporeans through the stories of Singapore’s many successful business leaders and entrepreneurs, Ho relates his personal life experiences such as the death of his loved ones to how it has helped him become a more empathetic leader who is able to connect with others.
Before the pandemic, Thai island Phuket offered visitors the perfect blend of sun, beach and seedy-but-fun nightlife as one of the region’s best-known tourist destinations. Now, it offers visitors something much more novel: a quarantine free holiday.
As of the start of July, fully vaccinated visitors from select countries can fly directly into Phuket and go straight from the tarmac to the beach. Spend a full 14 days there and visitors (or savvy Thai nationals) are welcome to continue their trip around Thailand, effectively spending their quarantine term in a resort under a program that is being called the “Phuket sandbox”.
Thai Real Estate Giant Bets Big On Tourism Rebound With $3.2 Billion Growth Plan
Courtesy of Asset World Corp.
Share to Facebook
Share to Linkedin
This story appears in the July 31, 2021 issue of Forbes Asia. Subscribe to Forbes Asia
Flush with cash from one of Thailand’s biggest IPOs, Asset World Corp. CEO Wallapa Traisorat is building new hotels and refurbishing tourist landmarks in hopes of a post-pandemic boom.
With Covid-19 still keeping foreign tourists away from Thailand’s pristine beaches and bustling cities, leaving more than 80% of hotel rooms unoccupied, one would expect the CEO of one of the country’s largest developers of hospitality, retail and office properties to hunker down. Instead, Wallapa Traisorat, CEO of Asset World Corp. (AWC), has mapped out a 100 billion baht ($3.2 billion) five-year growth plan to position her company for a post-pandemic tourism boom. “It’s a short-term impact that we are facing right now,” she says. “We see huge potentia
Thailand has packed its tourism expectations into the “Phuket Sandbox”
Along Patong beach in Phuket, noisy and loud foreign tourists are closed to restaurants and bars and inviting blue waters are empty, apart from a few Thai bathers.
Covid-19 has removed Thailand’s largest tourist island in 2019, registering 10 million foreign visitors for passengers, turning numerous resorts into ghost boats.
From Thursday, the island will begin accepting foreign tourists for the first time in more than a year, according to a pilot program called “Phuket Sandbox”.
Fully embedded visitors will enter Phuket without having to endure a two-week quarantine if they fly before the Covid-19 test and before the two arrive. They also need to download the location tracking app and stop traveling to the Thai mainland for 14 days.
Employees wait for costumers at an ice cream shop in Patong beach as Phuket gets ready to open to overseas tourists from July 1, allowing fully vaccinated foreigns to visit the resort island without quarantine, in Phuket, Thailand June 30, 2021. - Reuters
PHUKET (Bloomberg): Thailand is pushing ahead with plans to jumpstart its crucial tourism industry by reopening the popular resort island of Phuket to vaccinated travellers, even as the more virulent delta strain of coronavirus sweeps through the region.
Starting Thursday (July 1), inoculated tourists from low- and medium-risk countries such as the US and Spain will be allowed to holiday in Phuket without quarantining. If successful, the experiment could lead to a wider reopening of the Thai tourism industry as soon as October.