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As the title of this video suggests, we are asking the question, "How many folks have traveled to Thailand since the pandemic began?" The reason I bought this up is I found an excerpt in an article. It was an article not really related to this topic directly but there was an excerpt that I thought was really insightful. The article is titled: Thailand Pass set to replace CoE. It is from the Bangkok Post bangkokpost.com and the excerpt was just a tiny excerpt, I urge those watching this video to go check that out that article. Quoting directly: "According to Mr. Tanee, and Mr. Tanee is Tanee Sangrat, and he is a spokesman for the Foreign Affairs Ministry, so quoting: "According to Mr Tanee, his Ministry has approved more than 400,000 CoEs for Thai and foreign nationals so far." 

Well let's really dig into that, what that means. March 2020, specifically March 26, 2020 if I recall, they promulgated the Emergency Decree; they shut down Thailand and instituted quarantine measures. In fact it might have been a couple of days before that it started happening if I recall. So that is when all this began. The implemented the Certificate of Entry system pretty quickly thereafter. This came online very quickly. As I recall, it was the end of March, we were starting to talk about this around April, May of 2020 and when we started talking about this as I recall there was no one coming in. We were locked down. The country was in lockdown. According to this article more than 400,000 so okay 400,000 and change we will just use 400,000 as a round number because that is what the Bangkok Post cited; citing this Government spokesperson. Presumably that is everybody that has come in? Because Thai Nationals had to use CoE's, I think still do and so do foreign nationals. So is that the total number of folks that have come into Thailand, I am not saying it is, I am genuinely asking this question but is that the total number? Non civilian, maybe diplomatic travelers, hard to say, things like that. But let's just put that aside and forget about that but civilian travelers: tourists, Non-immigrants Visa holders, Business Visa holders work permit holders perhaps permanent residents, even Thai Nationals included in that number? If so remember in 2019 Thailand saw 40 million tourists in 2019. If that's the case, it really to me puts a fine point on things in a bunch of different ways. One, just how much this has affected the tourism sector if these numbers are right. Secondly, just how, I hesitate to use the term desperately but just how urgently we need to, moving forward look at getting this tourism situation, sort of right this ship. We need to get some serious numbers into Thailand and I hope that policy makers are looking at this and I think they are. There is no question in my mind. Everybody is concerned about this. I don't think that, there seems to be a kind of, I don't know what you want to call it, a meme floating around out there in the ether, the internet. I see it in comments in various forums and things: "oh they don't care about tourism sector anymore." No, they do. I have no doubt. Policymakers care a very great deal about the tourism sector in Thailand. It is a huge segment of GDP; it employs a lot of folks. There is not some ambivalence or indifference towards this. There is just a lot of, I hesitate to use the word but I guess there is no other real word, there is a lot of fear to some extent. There are a lot of folks that are very reticent about just opening the gates and seeing what happens and I can understand that. 

Now that said, in my mind based on what I am saying, I think it is very much an acceptable risk when you look at a cost benefit analysis and especially when you consider that it looks like we went from 40 million tourists in one year down to 400,000 total entrants over the course of over 18 months. Those are staggering comparisons to make, staggering numbers to look at. Hopefully, we will see positive things moving forward here at the end of 2021 and into 2022 here in the Kingdom of Thailand.