Thailand's Prime Minister Settha Thavisin proposes that representatives of five other Southeast Asian countries introduce a single tourist visa similar to the Schengen visa. This was reported by Bloomberg, according to UNN.
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A single visa should be valid in Thailand, Malaysia, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, and Myanmar.
According to Bloomberg, Prime Minister Thaksin has been discussing the idea with his counterparts from these five countries in recent months.
It is expected that such a visa will increase the inflow of tourists to these countries, as well as the income per tourist.
Last year, these six countries were visited by about 70 million tourists, more than half of whom came from Thailand and Malaysia. Tourism brought $48 billion to these two countries alone in 2023.
Over the past year, Thailand has canceled visas with China and introduced temporary visa waivers with a number of other countries, including Kazakhstan and India.
In 2023, Thailand received the largest number of tourists from Malaysia - 4.6 million, and China - 3.5 billion.
At the same time, many experts believe that the initiative to introduce a single visa is likely to end in nothing, given the previous experience of such cooperation between these countries. According to Bill Barnett, managing director of C9 Hotelworks, a more realistic option would be to conclude bilateral agreements between the countries.