Thai Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin said Thailand and China will permanently waive visa requirements for each country’s citizens from March.
Thailand eliminated visas for Chinese citizens in September in a bid to increase tourist arrivals.
The show attracted strong reaction at a time when Thailand was starting to lose its appeal to Chinese tourists.
Authorities said more than 22,000 Chinese people entered the Southeast Asian country in the first two days of the exemption. “Currently, we are ready to open the country and take care of tourists from both countries together.
This is good news,” Srettha said at a press conference on Tuesday. “This is an improvement in relations [between Thailand and China and strengthens the importance of the Thai passport,” he said.
Chinese are the second largest group of foreign tourists to Thailand, after Malaysians.
The Tourism Authority of Thailand said in November that it expected to welcome up to 3. 5 million Chinese visitors in all of 2023, still short of its target of 4 million.
The number is less than half of the roughly 11 million Chinese tourists who visited in 2019, but still represents a marked improvement over 2022, when just 270,000 of them were welcomed pick up.
The lack of cheap flights in the post-Covid era and the slowdown in the Chinese economy are among the reasons why tourists are hesitant to visit Thailand.
But some have also raised security concerns after rumors emerged that tourists were being kidnapped and taken across the border to work at scam centers in Myanmar or Cambodia.
Tourists are also worried after a shooting at Bangkok’s most famous shopping mall left a Chinese mother of two dead last October.
The tourism agency has set a target of welcoming 8. 2 million Chinese tourists by 2024.
China has also waived visa requirements to attract tourists.
Last November, it announced a trial visa exemption for visitors from France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Malaysia.
The program starts in December and will last until the end of November this year.