Thailand leads push for 6-nation visa

A Chinese tourist takes a selfie with Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin, during a welcome ceremony of the first batch of Chinese tourists under a five-month visa-free entry scheme at Bangkok’s International Airport, Sept 25, 2023. (Reuters)
A Chinese tourist takes a selfie with Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin, during a welcome ceremony of the first batch of Chinese tourists under a five-month visa-free entry scheme at Bangkok’s International Airport, Sept 25, 2023. (Reuters)

Thailand is steering a plan for a joint-visa programme with six Asean countries that together hosted about 70 million tourists last year.

Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin has discussed the Schengen-type visa idea with Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar and Vietnam in recent months.

The six Southeast Asian nations reported a combined 70 million foreign tourist arrivals in 2023, according to official data. Thailand and Malaysia accounted for more than half of the tally, generating about $48 billion in tourism revenue.

The single-visa is the most ambitious among Srettha’s tourism initiatives. Tourism accounts for about 20% of total jobs and making up about 12% of the nation’s $500 billion economy.

One tourism professional said the visa validity will need to be extended to 90 days from the usual 30-day period to make it attractive.

For a joint visa scheme, approvals have to be coordinated and the absence of standard immigration criteria among participating nations unlike the European Union can pose challenges, according to a professor at Chulalongkorn University’s political science faculty. Asean as a grouping is a divided body with a poor immigration record, he said.

Vocabulary

  • ambitious: difficult and needing a lot of effort to succeed - ความทะเยอทยาน
  • attractive: having features or qualities that make something seem interesting and worth having - น่าดึงดูด
  • combined: counted together - รวมกัน
  • criteria: a standard that is used for judging something or for making a decision about something - บรรทัดฐาน
  • economy: the relationship between production, trade and the supply of money in a particular country or region - เศรษฐกิจ
  • immigration: dealing with people entering and leaving the country - การตรวจคนเข้าเมือง
  • initiative: a new action or movement, often intended to solve a problem - ความคิดริเริ่ม
  • joint: belonging to or shared between two or more people - ร่วม, ที่ร่วมกัน
  • nation: a country considered as a group of people with the same language, culture and history, who live in a particular area under one government; all the people in a country - ประเทศ, คนในประเทศ
  • record: the list of things a person has achieved -
  • revenue: income from taxes or business activities - รายได้
  • tally: a record or count of a number of items - การบันทึกจำนวน
  • validity: the state of being legally accepted - การมีผลบังคับได้ตามกฎหมาย
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