Evidence from Thailand on Easing COVID-19’s International Travel Restrictions: An Impact on Economic Production, Household Income, and Sustainable Tourism Development

Abstract

Even though international travel restrictions are being used to keep the COVID-19 pandemic under control, these measures cannot be considered as long-term solutions to the ongoing crisis. Limitations on traveling activities have tremendous adverse consequences on a country’s economy, particularly leading in radically expanding economic downturn and a shrinking tourism industry. To overcome this hardship, several countries have eased COVID-19 travel restrictions. However, there are still questions concerning the benefit to society as the impact assessment of this implementation transmitting to an economy has not been explicitly investigated. In response to this, we aim to assess the impacts of this implementation as to provide a guideline to global countries for their future adoption. By calculating the output and household income multipliers from the tourism input–output table, this study utilizes a case study from Thailand to indicate that prolonging the full mobility restrictions of international tourists, which results in a yearly loss of revenue in Thai tourism industry, would cost country production up to 144.97 billion USD and up to 45.4 billion USD for loss of household income. When international travel limitations were relaxed, production and household damage would fall to 142.24 billion USD (+1.88%) and 44.7 billion USD (+1.54%), respectively. At individual sectors level, our calculation identified that the most damage of production activities would exist in public utility, agriculture, and food manufacturing sectors. In the perspective of household income, those in the agricultural sector would have greatest impact. This impact results from the Thai tourism industry positioned as a buyer in an economy, having most impact on sectors selling their products or inputs to the tourism industry. As suggested by the input–output multipliers, we emphasize that strengthening the resilience of tourism-related sectors and reforming the tourism industry in relation to potential consumption and production patterns are critical for sustainable tourism development.