Quang Ninh and Phuket discuss post-pandemic tourism recovery

On Sept. 22, a virtual conference was held to discuss discuss post-pandemic cooperation between Vietnam’s Quang Ninh province and Thailand’s Phuket, especially in re-opening tourism markets.

Prominent among those were Thailand Ambassador to Vietnam, Nikorndej Balankura, and Director of Quang Ninh Department of Tourism, Pham Ngoc Thuy.

Director of the Representative Office of the Tourism Authority of Thailand in Vietnam Ratiwan Boonprakong introduced the “Phuket Sandbox” programme which aims to prevent COVID-19 transmission between tourists and local residents.

Foreign tourists entering the country must come from countries with low or moderate risk of Covid-19 regulated by the Thai Ministry of Public Health. These travellers must have been fully vaccinated at least 14 days before arriving in Thailand and need to stay in these countries for at least 21 days and get prior to their arrival.

Visitors are required to have a negative RT-PCR test result within 72 hours prior to arrival. Visitors must also have Covid-19 health insurance, which is covered at a minimum of $100,000.

After arriving and during their staying in Phuket, visitors have to strictly comply with the regulations on distance, masks, disinfection, temperature measurement, Covid-19 testing and alert applications.

From July 1 to August 29, the programme welcomed over 25,800 visitors spending 450,806 nights and travelling to Phuket on 283 chartered flights, mostly from the US, UK, Israel, France, Germany, United Arab Emirates and Switzerland.

Phuket’s valuable experience is very helpful to Quang Ninh in the context that the province has completed the first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine for 100% of indicated residents and reopened many intra-provincial services and tourism activities.

In order to promote bilateral cooperation in the field of tourism, Director of the Quang Ninh provincial Tourism Department Pham Ngoc Thuy suggested Thailand continue creating favourable conditions for Udon Thani province to effectively carry out an action plan within the framework of tourism cooperation in the heritage triangle of Vietnam’s Ha Long Bay, Thailand’s Ban Chiang and Laos’ Luang Prabang, as well as help Quang Ninh’s tourism sector explore opportunities and promote destinations.

He also proposed the two local tourism sectors establish an information sharing mechanism and study building a suitable tourism cooperation model.

Quang Ninh officially resumed its intra-provincial tourism from September 21 and plans to welcome back visitors from other localities without local transmissions within 14 days, in the last two months of this year. They are required to be fully vaccinated and take Realtime-PCR tests within 48 hours.