(Yicai) Jan. 3 – China and Thailand will permanently exempt each other’s citizens from March. Yicai learned that the flight volume between China and Thailand in 2023 has not yet recovered to 50 percent of the pre-pandemic level, and it remains to be seen whether this mutual visa exemption can help accelerate the recovery of flight volume.

The introduction of the permanent visa-free policy may help airlines prioritize the decision to resume the layout of routes between China and Thailand, according to industry insiders.

Thailand and China will permanently exempt their citizens from visas from March, China Media Group reported yesterday, citing Thai Prime Minister Srettha Thavisi. This is an extension of a temporary visa-free entry policy that the Southeast Asian country introduced in September last year that was due to expire on Feb. 29.

After the release of the new reciprocal visa-free scheme, the search volume for air tickets between China and Thailand more than doubled on Fliggy, according to data from Alibaba Group Holding’s travel booking site. Meanwhile, on Trip.Com’s Chinese platform, the search volume for flights from Shanghai and Beijing to Bangkok rose more than 40 percent.

Forty airlines, 27 Chinese and 13 foreign, were operating flights between the Chinese mainland and Thailand as of the end of last year. The ones with the most flights between the two countries were China Easter Airlines with 801 flights, Thai AirAsia with 675 flights, and Spring Airlines with 554 flights.

In addition to airlines that resumed flights between China and Thailand after the end of the Covid-19 pandemic, some other carriers, such as Beijing Capital Airlines and Urumqi Airlines, introduced routes between the countries for the first time last year. However, some airlines such as Hebei Airlines and Tibet Airlines have yet to resume their routes.

Last year was not a particularly positive year for flights between China and Thailand. The flight volume between the two countries recovered only to 50 percent of the pre-pandemic level in 2019.

Some 5,828 flights were operated on the China-Thailand route in December, while 500 were canceled, resulting in a cancellation rate of 8.6 percent. This means that carriers were unsatisfied with the passenger load, so they canceled some flights.

The lower-than-expected tourism demand for Thailand is related to various factors, including some unexpected events experienced by Chinese tourists in Thailand and the introduction of visa-free entry for Chinese citizens from competing tourist destinations Malaysia and Singapore.

Editor: Futura Costaglione