Khiri Travel and Partners have won the Local Community Engagement category at the 2023 Web in Travel (WiT) Travel Changemakers Awards for its #OpenThailandSafely campaign.
The campaign launched in March 2021 as vaccine rollouts were picking up and tourism economies across the globe were beginning to welcome back travellers. The defacto shutdown of international travel due to Covid-19 decimated Thailand’s tourism economy.
#OpenThailandSafely was created by Khiri Travel and supported by 60 travel industry companies and organisations. The central idea of the campaign was to allow vaccinated tourists back into Thailand without requiring them to quarantine upon arrival.
The campaign received over 12,000 supporting online signatories and a petition was sent to the Thai Prime Minister, the Minister for Tourism, and the Governor of the Tourism Authority of Thailand.
The Thai government announced the reopening of Phuket from 1 July 2021 and other Thai regions from 1 October 2021.
“We don’t necessarily claim that Open Thailand Safely had a direct impact,” said Willem Niemeijer, CEO of Khiri Travel. “But we believe ours was a bold and necessary voice.”
When the campaign launched, Thailand’s inbound tourism full year 2020 had fallen to 6.7 million visitors, down from 39.7 million in 2019. An estimated three million people had been made unemployed in the tourism sector.
Furthermore, charities and foundations such as elephant camps, wildlife rehabilitation centres, and those supporting people with special needs went into severe hardship or closed due to the tourism economy collapsing.
“Open Thailand Safely brought the tourism sector together. It made the case for the reopening of borders to help millions of Thai people,” said William Heinecke, Chairman of Minor International, and a key supporter of the reopening campaign.
