Visitors take pictures of the gold-plated stupa at Wat Phra That Doi Suthep Buddhist temple in Chiang Mai, Thailand in November 2020. Photo: AFP

Overseas tourists began pouring into Bangkok and the holiday island of Phuket on Monday as Thailand kickstarted its tourism industry after 18 months of COVID-19 curbs.

The coronavirus pandemic hammered Thailand's tourism-reliant economy, which 2020 saw its worst performance since the 1997 Asian financial crisis as arrivals dwindled more than 80 percent.

Thai authorities have given the green light to vaccinated tourists from over 60 "low-risk" countries to skip hotel quarantine - providing the sector a much-needed lifeline.

Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi airport and Phuket's international terminal were the first on Monday morning to receive visitors, with mostly European tourists greeted by staff dressed in PPE gear to process their documents. 

"We are very, very happy," Andre Winkler, 55, told AFP after he and his partner passed immigration in Bangkok. 

"We stay in Thailand for six months every year for winter time because in Germany, it's cold... The last time, before corona, we came to Thailand was 2019," he said. 

In Phuket, Susanne Peter, 57, said she and her partner will stay on the island for a week before moving on to Bangkok and Hua Hin, another beach getaway. 

"We love the [Thai] people, they are really kind and really friendly," she told AFP, adding this was their first trip since the pandemic began. 

Airports of Thailand - which manages the country's international terminals - said it expects Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi to receive 30,000 passengers on Monday. 

Visitors are required to take a COVID-19 test upon landing, and spend a night at a government-approved hotel to await results before being allowed to travel freely.

Thailand hopes to capitalize on travelers escaping the winter blues in December, with several European countries, the US and China on the approved list.

"The most important thing that the government and I are thinking right now is to make people's livelihoods return to normal," Premier Prayut Chan-O-Cha said Friday. 

Tourism accounts for nearly a fifth of the economy and the impact of the pandemic has reverberated across various sectors, from restaurants to transportation.

But authorities expect 10 to 15 million visitors to return in 2022, with revenues forecast to surpass $30 billion.

AFP