The Thai PM has paid another visit to Phuket (seems to be his fave province), meeting with various officials to discuss tourism and safety on the island.
Srettha Thavisin says that this coming high season, he wants to see a number of processes accelerated, in particular immigration checks, so that visitors have to wait no more than 30 minutes at immigration checkpoints when visitors arrive.
The PM highlighted the need for automated document checking at Immigration, to reduce the workload of immigration officers and the processing time for visitors to the kingdom. He has also called for baggage handling to be speeded up at the island’s airport.
The PM made his remarks at a meeting held yesterday, August 11, and attended by various representatives from the Royal Thai Police, Airports of Thailand, Immigration Police, the Royal Thai Navy, plus the Phuket governor, the Tourist Police and Marine Police.
Srettha also emphasised the need to keep tourists safe on Phuket, both in terms of crime prevention and marine safety.
Officers from Police Region 8 updated the PM on crime prevention measures, such as their coordination efforts with consulates of tourism markets such as Russian, China, India, Australia, the UK and Scandinavian countries, in addition to the recruitment of more multilingual volunteers to help tourists.
The PM also instructed the Navy to ensure marine safety, with a focus on passenger boats, sea rescue, and helping the large cruise ships docking in Phuket.
Officials also discussed the current increase in tourist numbers, despite the “high season” being still a few months away. According to Airports of Thailand data, this month, Phuket Airport is seeing between 20 and 30 flights arriving each day.
The coming high season is expected to bring up to 15,000 visitors a day, or 600,000 a month, which will be a 100% increase on the same period last year.
SOURCE: Khaosod English
