Thai Tourism Recovery On Track as International Arrivals Jump

Thailand welcomed 11.15 million foreign visitors in 2022, beating the government’s target for the year and suggesting that the recovery of its tourism sector is set to continue into this year, the country’s tourism ministry said yesterday.

This was still far short of the 40 million-odd international arrivals that the country registered in 2019, prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. But it marks a sharp improvement on the 428,000 visitors that the country saw in 2021, when access to the country was complicated by a host of pandemic-related travel restrictions.

Somewhat surprisingly, the country’s top three source markets in 2022 were Malaysia, India, and Singapore, according to ministry data.

This is obviously good news for Thailand, whose economy is the second largest in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) but which is also unusually dependent on tourism. While the country managed to contain COVID-19 with relative success during 2020, the shutdowns and collapse in international travel brought international tourism to a virtual halt. This contributed to the country experiencing the second-worst recession of the 10 ASEAN nations that year, with the Asian Development Bank (ADB) reporting that its economy contracted by 6.1 percent.