Sandbox helps Russians stay top over New Year
Tourist arrivals from Russia held the top spot as the Number 1 tourist source market demographic over the Christmas and New Year holidays, a position they are likely to keep into the coming New Year.
Russians first climbed into the top spot at the end of November, and have maintained their winter holiday trend to Phuket throughout December.
According to the Phuket Immigration Daily Report for Dec 28, more than 17,513 Russians had landed in Phuket since the beginning of December, followed by German nationals with 11,960 and British in third place with 9,476 arrivals.
By Monday (Jan 3) the gap had blown out to 21,389 Russian arrivals followed by 13,376 German tourists. The UK held third place with 10,365 arrivals, followed by Sweden (7,742) and France (6,399).
As of Monday, 86,272 people had entered Phuket under the Test & Go scheme since its launch on Nov 1, including 3,785 Thai nationals.
During the same period, 43,732 arrivals had landed in Phuket under the Sandbox scheme, including 645 Thais.
Of note, the suspension of the Test & Go scheme never affected Russian tourist arrivals as Russia, and Kazakhstan and Ukraine, were never added to the list of approved countries.
As marked by the TAT reports, both Dec 27 and Dec 28 saw TUI flights bringing tourists to Phuket, despite reports still circulating in the media over the New Year that travel giant TUI Nordic had cancelled all flights to Phuket since Dec 25. The company’s Sweden headquarters dismissed the reports in The Phuket News a direct reply to by email last Monday night.
Following the suspension of the Test & Go scheme on Dec 21 due to fears of the Omicron variant spreading throughout Thailand, the number of daily arrivals to Phuket dropped from the mid-4,000s to mid-2000s. However, as of Monday, even with the scheme suspended, daily arrivals had recovered to mid-3,000s.
On Monday (Jan 2), 3,523 tourists landed at Phuket International Airport. Of those, 1,439 were Test & Go tourists and 2,075 were Sandbox tourists, along with seven Alternative Quarantine arrivals and two travellers in transit.
The arrivals had landed in Phuket on 26 different flights, said the TAT Phuket Reopening Daily Report.
Meanwhile, new direct flights to Phuket from Russian-speaking countries continue to launch. Sunday Airlines resumed flights to Phuket on Dec 26, bringing 240 tourists from Almaty, Kazakhstan.
Ural Airlines resumed their direct flights on Christmas Eve (Dec 24), bringing 90 tourist arrivals from Irkutsk, in Russia’s Far East.