From The Thaiger

Following the cancellation of Thailand’s “Test & Go” tourist scheme amidst fear of an Omicron outbreak, the Europe’s largest travel firm TUI Nordic announced it had cancelled scheduled chartered flights to Phuket from December to April next year. Around 30,000 people had plans to travel to the island province.

The head of the Phuket Hotels Association (Kata and Karon), Angkhana Thaneswisetkul, said most visitors were hesitant to visit Thailand after Omicron cases piled up despite the New Year’s holidays, and that some EU nations are already instituting quarantine for returnees from countries with the new variant.

https://thethaiger.com/news/phuket/plans-change-for-30000-tourists-european-travel-firm-cancels-flights-to-phuket

1. As there are about 4 days of December left, that seems like rather short notice to cancel flights from December to April.   Remember how airlines like TUI treat their customers when booking future trips

2 Since only Phuket has a sandbox scheme at present, I'd have thought demand would be holding up relatively well, with people using it as a gateway into Thailand. 

TUI's cancellation may not be linked only to the number of Omicron cases in Thailand. This sentence "some EU nations are already instituting quarantine for returnees from countries with the new variant" suggests that bookings are being cancelled because travelers don't want to be inconvenienced with quarantine on return. However, how serious a problem this is I can't say as I haven't been keeping track of which countries are re-imposing quarantine.

From The Thaiger

TUI Nordic continue their European flights into Phuke

Yesterday it was reported that Europe’s largest travel firm TUI Nordic announced it had cancelled scheduled chartered flights to Phuket from December to April next year. The Thaiger has since been contacted by TUI Nordic to say that the information, originally published by The Nation, was incorrect.

European travel giant TUI, with their headquarters in Sweden, have now confirmed that TUI will indeed continue with its flights to Phuket throughout the northern winter schedule, as planned.

A Phuket representative was quoted originally, but the Senior Product Manager of TUI Nordic, Pontus Svensson, sent an email to The Thaiger this morning stating that TUI Nordic will continue services into Phuket, and also, because of the changes to the government’s Test and Go arrival program, happily reroute TUI passengers through Phuket, where the Sandbox Program is still accepting applications.

“Customers that have booked holidays outside of Phuket, will be contacted and offered to change their holiday to Phuket instead – and for the ones that had time to fill in Thailand Pass before the restrictions changed, their holiday remains unchanged.”

https://thethaiger.com/news/phuket/tui-tourists-european-travel-firm-cancels-flights-to-phuket-2

TUI fly, or not TUI fly, that is the question.

On 12/28/2021 at 8:31 AM, z909 said:

TUI fly, or not TUI fly, that is the question.

TUI-ch his own!