Thailand’s plan to reopen the tourist haven of Phuket could become a model for other vacation hot spots in Asia to open their borders and bring in visitors as strategies such as travel bubbles falter, according to the founder of Banyan Tree Holdings Ltd.
Tourism-reliant Thailand aims to allow quarantine-free travel to its prime destination from July 1 for the first time in more than a year, provided visitors are inoculated against COVID-19 and aren’t coming from high-risk countries.
The so-called Phuket Sandbox plan is dependent on the vaccination rate among the island’s residents hitting at least 70%. It currently stands at about 60%, far higher than the 5% nationwide, after a concerted push to get local residents vaccinated.