Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Thailand Pass and we are discussing processing times and some pretty good information I found out there came from the Thai Enquirer, that is thaienquirer.com, the article is titled: Government Announces New Entry Regulations. There is a lot of information in there. I urge folks watching this video to go check out that article but to quote just one particular excerpt directly, quoting: "The registration for the Test and Go procedure is still done via the Thailand Pass system, with a processing time of around 3 to 7 days, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs says."

So yeah that is also what we have been finding. I mean some of the folks here in our office have been able to get it done a little bit faster than that depending on circumstances but for the most part yeah, 3-7 days. Now that is a major time window differentiation; 3-7 days that is 3 days versus a full week! And one of the real concerns about Thailand Pass is the fact that well quite honestly Thailand, there was a lot of demand for tourism in Thailand and traveling into Thailand that arose from what I would call sort of “impulse travel” to some extent. The numbers we saw before 2020; 39 million Travelers if I recall correctly in 2019. Part of that number stemmed from the fact it was relatively easy to get in and out of Thailand. You could leave, go do a Border Run, do a Visa Run come back in. If you were working in the region come spend a couple of days in Thailand, then boom off to Singapore, off to Malaysia, off to Vietnam off to Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar, any place around here, pretty straightforward to move around.

But again Thailand Pass, as we have discussed, not overly loved by anybody who is looking to travel to Thailand. It is a rather cumbersome process. They have argued it is better than the Certificate of Entry but I would argue it is really basically cosmetic differences. I mean really the Thailand Pass is effectively just a Certificate of Entry by another name, but the bigger issue is this timing issue. Where once it was possible to just hop on a plane come into Thailand, or make a booking a day or two in advance and come on into Thailand, that is just not possible. I remember almost on a quarterly basis I would often times end up going to Cambodia a couple, two three maybe four times a year but the same principle applied. It was you just book your flight, oftentimes AirAsia or something, it can all be done online. Book your flight; get on a plane; go there, similar to Thailand, it was relatively easy to do that. Well Thailand Pass not only creates a number of hoops, you have got to jump through and you sort of feel like you are filling out some online form for the DMV just to deal with it. The bureaucracy is somewhat exasperating to say the least but more importantly there is this timing element. The fact that it can be three to seven days before you even know that you are going to be able to enter Thailand and that causes a lot of consternation for people; it makes folks seriously rethink the idea of coming in to Thailand in the first place, 

So again, as we have discussed another videos, hopefully this will end relatively soon or sooner rather than later and we can get Thailand back to the position she was status quo ante COVID in 2020, quarter one.