Chinese tourists arrive at Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok, Thailand, January 2023. Photo by AFP
Thailand has said it will halve the visa approval time for Chinese visitors to less than a week to ease travel from the world’s largest outbound tourism market.
The tourism industry had been complaining that the approval time was currently too long since it had taken only 3-5 working days to issue visas in pre-Covid times.
China was Thai tourism’s biggest overseas market in 2019 as 11 million visited the country, accounting for 28% of arrivals.
There were one million Chinese tourists between January and May 18 this year, and the Thai government expects to achieve its target of five million during the full year.
