Booked ticket for December

[floridarob]

Will things be "normal" by December....who knows.

I needed to have something on the horizon to look forward to and used miles for this trip that can be re-deposited if not.

Now looking for hotels that are offering free cancellation just in case as well. Most of the low prices I'm seeing is for non refundable rates, even if travel isn't allowed.

Thought I'd start a thread that would get some momentum going , talking about when everyone is thinking about returning 

Let me know if you guys see deals for hotels, BKK & Pattaya

[floridarob]

what to look forward to :

https://loyaltylobby.com/2020/06/06/thai-tourism-authority-draws-up-blueprint-for-tourism-revival-during-covid-times/?omhide=true

[reader]

Found some interesting offers on Travelocity for Dec. 1-8:

Silom Serene (Silom soi 3) has a $41 rate that can be cancelled by Nov. 30)

Raya $59 (pay now but cancel before No. 27)

Red Planet $31 and can cancel by Nov. 30

You'll find similar offerings in Agoda.

 

[spoon]

27 minutes ago, floridarob said:

what to look forward to :

https://loyaltylobby.com/2020/06/06/thai-tourism-authority-draws-up-blueprint-for-tourism-revival-during-covid-times/?omhide=true

What i found from the above link.

 

Only the strongest will travel as tourists focus more on their health and safety. This means Gen Y or Millennials are expected to be the first to come back during any recovery period. Services must be adjusted to serve this group; who are self-assured, have high standards, expect new innovations to combat the health situation, and are concerned for family and friends once back home.

 

[DivineMadman]

2 hours ago, spoon said:

What i found from the above link.

 

Only the strongest will travel as tourists focus more on their health and safety. This means Gen Y or Millennials are expected to be the first to come back during any recovery period. Services must be adjusted to serve this group; who are self-assured, have high standards, expect new innovations to combat the health situation, and are concerned for family and friends once back home.

 

To clarify a weee bit.  This quote is with respect to the current phase - the opening up for domestic tourism.  So the "self-assured, have high standards, expect new innovations to combat the health situation, and are concerned for family and friends once back home" is how they are characterizing the young upwardly-mobile Thais.  The kind that flock to craft beer shops and Prada.

For foreigners, I expect they will be looking for the low-volume high value tourists who will be happy holed up for a week or so at a nice resort on Phuket or Samui to start.

[jason1975]

10 hours ago, DivineMadman said:

To clarify a weee bit.  This quote is with respect to the current phase - the opening up for domestic tourism.  So the "self-assured, have high standards, expect new innovations to combat the health situation, and are concerned for family and friends once back home" is how they are characterizing the young upwardly-mobile Thais.  The kind that flock to craft beer shops and Prada.

For foreigners, I expect they will be looking for the low-volume high value tourists who will be happy holed up for a week or so at a nice resort on Phuket or Samui to start.

If I were to hole up in a resort on Phuket, I will definitely invite a boy to stay with me!

[spoon]

13 minutes ago, jason1975 said:

If I were to hole up in a resort on Phuket, I will definitely invite a boy to stay with me!

Thats what im thinking too, just let us travel already haha. 

[spoon]

Btw, malaysia gov just announced there will be no 14 days quarantined for returning malaysian citizens starting 10th June. All returnee will be required to be tested though, and can go back home once  a negative test result is obtained. Things are looking good on one end now.

[DivineMadman]

5 hours ago, jason1975 said:

If I were to hole up in a resort on Phuket, I will definitely invite a boy to stay with me!

If .... and it is of course a big "if" .... the government follows through with the bubble-within-a-bubble travel idea for islands like Phuket and Samui, then it is possible , that they would put travel restrictions on Thais going in and out of the high-risk bubbles.  This might, for example, mean guys can't come down to Phuket from Bangkok for a few days and then go home.  (An analogy might be the mandatory quarantine on arrival in Chiang Mai that is in effect now.).   Certainly some guys would relocate to Phuket or Samui or wherever.  But it may not be as easy as calling a friend to come dow to Phuket for a few days.

I think this is just one of the many issues the government is working through as it tries to figure out these sorts of first steps to start re-opening tourism.  It might just end up an idea too complicated to work out and enough time will pass that the government gets safe with testing, track and trace.

Note:  People may have seen that French Polynesia is opening up July 15 - requiring fit-to-fly no COVID-19 certificate, insurance, testing after arrival, among other things.  

[vinapu]

before governments will make their decisions, virus may do it's and mutate to less malicious version. I think is's what happened to Sars.

Tourism by it 's very nature is care-free exercise and I can't envision too many people willing to put up with certificates, testing, quarantines  etc so massive travel won't happen until  those restrictions are gone, either because of government decisions or there's vaccine or whole scare is gone.

[spoon]

Malaysia gov has opened up domestic travel. Within an hour, 1000 hotels bookings made to one island destination, langkawi. 5 stars hotel slashing prices up to 70%. 

[DivineMadman]

1 hour ago, vinapu said:

Tourism by it 's very nature is care-free exercise and I can't envision too many people willing to put up with certificates, testing, quarantines  etc so massive travel won't happen until  those restrictions are gone, either because of government decisions or there's vaccine or whole scare is gone.

I think that's right.  The pool of potential travelers is much smaller:  the people (1) still have the money to travel internationally now, even though with most economies not doing very well, (2) who are willing to to take the risk of international travel and increased exposure, and (3) will deal with the inevitable testing/tracking/tracing and insurance issues.  

[spoon]

I commented before that two countries needed to create a mutual agreement in order to open up international travel. 

I came to a recent article in timeout and they gave the name to this, coined as travel bubble, quoting britain-france plan. This will avoid the quarantine requirement, and contained the virus spreading only within this bubble. Other than immigration limitation to international travelling, the risk is not much different than domestic travelling. If both gov mutually agrees to shoulder the risk together, then we can potentially see boost in international tourism soon. I might oversimplify this as this can be very tough to achieve. 

[anddy]

4 hours ago, DivineMadman said:

An analogy might be the mandatory quarantine on arrival in Chiang Mai that is in effect now.

I have read about that, but I wonder how they actually do that in practice. Flight arrivals, ok, easy. But road traffic? Do they have road blocks on ALL roads into the province, basically arresting (well sending them into quarantine) people there? Can't really imagine that.... 

The weekend before last, domestic travel restrictions were ostensibly still in place, i.e. no are extremely limited inter-provincial buses etc. However, road travel was completely normal. I had rented a car and went to Kanchanaburi with a friend. Completely normal trip. The only thing was indeed a check point upon entering Kanchanaburi (but not any of the intervening provinces, go figure) where they simply checked all passengers' temperatures and that was it. If there were a mandatory quarantine like in Chiang Mai, they would have to stop ALL traffic at such check points and deal with the people accordingly. Hard to imagine.... I will ask ask a guy living in my building who just went off to CM on a road trip with his motorbike when he returns what the deal was.

[DivineMadman]

12 minutes ago, anddy said:

I have read about that, but I wonder how they actually do that in practice. Flight arrivals, ok, easy. But road traffic? Do they have road blocks on ALL roads into the province, basically arresting (well sending them into quarantine) people there? Can't really imagine that.... 

The weekend before last, domestic travel restrictions were ostensibly still in place, i.e. no are extremely limited inter-provincial buses etc. However, road travel was completely normal. I had rented a car and went to Kanchanaburi with a friend. Completely normal trip. The only thing was indeed a check point upon entering Kanchanaburi (but not any of the intervening provinces, go figure) where they simply checked all passengers' temperatures and that was it. If there were a mandatory quarantine like in Chiang Mai, they would have to stop ALL traffic at such check points and deal with the people accordingly. Hard to imagine.... I will ask ask a guy living in my building who just went off to CM on a road trip with his motorbike when he returns what the deal was.

My guess - and I hope never to find out in person - is that they are just trying to capture the easy cases of incoming buses and airplanes - and only from the high risk provinces.  That would be sensible, and avoids getting all bolloxed up over whether some people can get through.  A "do not let the perfect be the enemy of the good" solution.  (And I suppose hotels might end up enforcing as well.)  It would seem likely that if someone really wants to get into Chiang Mai without the hassle it would be possible.

Note that each province can set its own rules.  That might explain why Kanchanburi tested but others in between didn't.  

With luck these sorts of restrictions will disappear soon enough.

[DivineMadman]

47 minutes ago, spoon said:

I commented before that two countries needed to create a mutual agreement in order to open up international travel. 

I came to a recent article in timeout and they gave the name to this, coined as travel bubble, quoting britain-france plan. This will avoid the quarantine requirement, and contained the virus spreading only within this bubble. Other than immigration limitation to international travelling, the risk is not much different than domestic travelling. If both gov mutually agrees to shoulder the risk together, then we can potentially see boost in international tourism soon. I might oversimplify this as this can be very tough to achieve. 

The earliest proposed bubble that I heard about was to be between Australia and New Zealand in very early May, and that still hasn't been implemented.  Shows how difficult the process will be.

[anddy]

3 minutes ago, DivineMadman said:

With luck these sorts of restrictions will disappear soon enough.

fingers, legs and everything else crossed!

[anddy]

1 minute ago, DivineMadman said:

The earliest proposed bubble that I heard about was to be between Australia and New Zealand in very early May, and that still hasn't been implemented.  Shows how difficult the process will be.

the Baltic countries have actually implemented one already, being the first.

[DivineMadman]

1 minute ago, anddy said:

the Baltic countries have actually implemented one already, being the first.

And Italy and Greece have spread their legs arms open to travelers from a bunch of countries already.  

[anddy]

haha yes they have... hopefully Thailand will follow suit soon. They are all countries sharing the importance of tourism for their economies. Though Thailand has a more global reach than Italy and Greece, which draw mostly on fellow European travelers, so that makes it a bit more difficult I guess

[spoon]

Easiest things to do first is opening up regional or border countries. Sadly, in SE region, we had few countries with high daily cases still with many still afraid of second wave, so it wont be as quick as one can hope for. Some countries are also battling illegal immigrant trying to enter the country through borders too. 

[anddy]

yeah, here in TH they seem more afraid of a second wave than they need to. They STILL keep the stupid curfew, no idea what that's supposed to be for now. We had ZERO local transmissions for 2 weeks already. Like that is going to shoot up when they were to lift the 11pm-3am curfew now. Most everyone is at home in bed then anyway, and partying won;t be an issue as bars are closed, so people can and do party at home, curfew or not. It's getting annoying by now.... [end of rant]

[vinapu]

37 minutes ago, anddy said:

. hopefully Thailand will follow suit soon. They are all countries sharing the importance of tourism for their economies. Though Thailand has a more global reach than Italy and Greece, which draw mostly on fellow European travelers, so that makes it a bit more difficult I guess

I think they will be watching close if partial re-opening  creates increase in new cases and if not , actions to reopen will be swift and brave .

And then many countries will discover that bringing back normal economic activity  will actually INCREASE death rate compare to Covid closure period due to jump in pollution.

I still  have high hopes to attend that Grand re-opening of Senso on Aug 1, LOL

 

[vinapu]

10 minutes ago, anddy said:

yeah, here in TH they seem more afraid of a second wave than they need to. They STILL keep the stupid curfew, no idea what that's supposed to be for now. We had ZERO local transmissions for 2 weeks already. Like that is going to shoot up when they were to lift the 11pm-3am curfew now. Most everyone is at home in bed then anyway, and partying won;t be an issue as bars are closed, so people can and do party at home, curfew or not. It's getting annoying by now.... [end of rant]

That's the increasing feeling of people all over that restrictions run their course.

Yesterday I took stroll in park along the river where I live. Positively I must say that never in 25 years  I saw it so full of people and if 1 in 100 wore a mask that was it.

 

[anddy]

31 minutes ago, vinapu said:

That's the increasing feeling of people all over that restrictions run their course.

Yesterday I took stroll in park along the river where I live. Positively I must say that never in 25 years  I saw it so full of people and if 1 in 100 wore a mask that was it.

 

Restrictions should make sense to be accepted by the public. Here, one is obliged to wear a mask more or less everywhere. In public transport, that makes perfect sense. In a shopping mall, fine. In the park or even on the beach? I don't think so. The same with the curfew, makes even less sense than mask wearing in an outdoor setting. That's where frustrations come from.... 

At your river park, I'd say the same: no need to wear a mask as it's outdoors and transmission risk is already very low. So common sense tells me it's all good there.