Free flights and digital Yuan: latest travel news
Thailand has floated the idea of giving away free tickets as well as deep discounts to international tourists wishing to visit Phuket, in a new promotional campaign that falls under Thailand’s tourism recovery-focused sandbox plan. The campaign would offer tourists who visit Thailand for more than 10 days free or discounted flight tickets with carriers such as Bangkok Airways. Yuthasak Supasorn, the governor of Tourism Authority of Thailand, hopes to attract over 100,000 international tourists to Phuket in the first three months of the campaign’s implementation.
In China, adoption momentum is picking up behind the central government’s drive around the country’s digital Yuan. Conceptualised as a mechanism to level the playing field in a payments industry dominated by WeChat Pay and Alipay, the digital Yuan will now be powering a new tourism transactions landscape. Online travel agency Tuniu.com has recently announced it will be integrating its payments systems with the digital Yuan infrastructure. As the digital Yuan project is rolled out in a bid to gradually phase out cash, the digital Yuan may very well be the robust payments ecosystem China needs to spearhead significant growth in consumer spending. Tuniu’s early incorporation into the digital Yuan infrastructure creates no doubt as to how much Beijing values the economic clout of its travel industry, in addition to the immense value that can be drawn from the China market by international destinations.
Despite a FDA-mandated pause in vaccinations in the United States, the global tourism recovery still appears to be underway. Qatar Airlines recently conducted the world’s first fully-vaccinated flight, with only vaccinated check-in staff, onboard staff and passengers onboard, boosting confidence in the global tourism industry’s recovery. South Korea has also announced it will issue a digital vaccination passport for vaccinated citizens to travel across borders, using blockchain technology to prevent fraud with the smartphone app-based passport.
Australian tour guides have started building brand awareness and rekindling consumer interest in the destination, utilising once-hated selfie sticks and livestreaming platforms to provide virtual tours to virtual tourists. With some of the tour guides earning a small income in the process, these virtual tours have built awareness among predominantly US, UK and European audiences ahead of the global tourism recovery. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has also fired up an all-new strategy for tourism industry-building, targeting 100 million international travel arrivals by the end of the decade. With China making out a key market for the destination, the Saudi Tourism Authority recently concluded its China Online Promotion virtual conference, connecting 27 local exhibitors with leading Chinese industry decision-makers.
