Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing confusion amongst foreign tourists in Thailand and a very interesting article. This is from ASEAN NOW, aseannow.com, the article is titled: Stop confusing foreign tourists, Tourism Chief tells Government - and make Covid tests cheaper. 

The chairman of Thailand's Tourism Business Association said that the delay in reopening much of the country from October 1st to November 1st was further bad news for the sector." Quoting further: "It had damaged the confidence," I want to get back to that in a minute, "It had damaged the confidence of potential tourists to the country, said Chamnan Srisawat in comments reported by TNA and hit travel agents hard." Quoting further: "Chamnan said that foreigners have been confused by all the names that meant nothing to them - Sandbox, Move On, Recharge even Charming had been bandied about." Quoting further: "He wanted to see every area opening under the same banner, with the same rules and the same operating procedures whether it is Bangkok, Pattaya, Phuket, Chiang Mai, Hua Hin or Cha-am." Quoting further: "Difficulty in getting the timing right over bookings for getting a Certificate of Entry should also be addressed." Just talking on Certificates of Entry, I made a video contemporaneously with this one. Yeah the Certificate of Entry thing is a major issue and that needs to be rectified ASAP. I know I am being a little bit more emphatic on that than I usually am in some of these videos, but quite frankly as a citizen of Thailand, this Certificate of Entry thing is a real problem. If it continues like this, it could really cost the tourism industry in many major ways. 

That being said, and I have done another video getting into that so you can see me over there talking about that, but I thought it was really notable to see someone, again this is from Thailand's Tourism Business Association, the Head of this coming out and noting, "The foreigners are confused by all this- "sandbox, move on, recharge" - they don't care about these names. They just want to know what the rules are to come back to Thailand and that is what we need to figure out. We need to make a uniform set of rules and quite frankly we need to stick to them. Going back again, "It had damaged the confidence of potential tourists". That is key. Going back into April of this year when Thailand very briefly eased if you will or cut back the requirement for quarantine, it went down to 7 days for vaccinated tourists for like 2 weeks; it was down and then boom it went right back. Again, I am not getting into the facts behind that. It was what it was. Policy makers made a determination and they went with it. Okay, water under the bridge. However, let's have a look at what that did. What were the ramifications of that? Good, bad or indifferent? What were the ramifications of that policy change? It really damaged confidence. I got correspondence from a lot of folks who said "wow that really spooked me. I was looking to come back in and then they just reversed themselves. Maybe I will have a look sometime later". Quite frankly I just saw it. It was palpable. We saw it happening in real time, people losing confidence and what that meant.

I truly and sincerely hope that does not happen moving forward. I don't think anybody wants it to. I don't think anybody here is playing games or acting in bad faith but again I think it is notable what this gentleman brings up. Yeah we need to come back uniformly and we need to have rules that apply to everywhere in Thailand rather than this kind of patchwork quilt situation that puts people off. If they know they can go to one place but not the other under these rules and whatever, it makes it overly complex and really for no great benefit. So hopefully we will see things uniformly open up smoothly in the coming weeks and hopefully we will be seeing some tourism arrivals, or tourist arrivals I should say, here in the Kingdom of Thailand in quarter 4 of 2021.