Thai hospitality players move in on cannabis tourism
Cannabis tourism is poised to become a growth market in Thailand as the Kingdom’s relationship with marijuana goes back overground.
Thailand was the first South-east Asian country to legalise the production, import, and export of cannabis for medical purposes in 2018. This year, Thai authorities approved the de facto decriminalisation of marijuana but left a grey area around its recreational use.
These moves, say observers, are fostering an environment where cannabis tourism can help resuscitate an industry that has been badly battered by the global pandemic. Indeed, many feel Thailand’s relaxed regulations could lead to a surge in medical and wellness tourism where marijuana is utilised as a key component.
“Thailand is well known as a destination for medical tourism and wellness travel. So, these sectors will surely benefit from the latest developments,” opined Dirk De Cuyper, CEO of S Hotels and Resorts.
Cannabis proponents say the plant can help relieve stress, reduce fatigue, increase appetite, and encourage deeper sleep. It can also stimulate the intestines and soothe inflamed skin.
Given these benefits, it is no surprise that numerous hospitality and wellness brands have latched onto the cannabis trend in Thailand.
Luxury spa facility Panpuri Wellness has put together a Holistic Cannabis Wellness Experience that includes onsen services, spa treatments using cannabis leaves, and cannabis-infused food and beverages.
Anantara is another major hospitality name going big on cannabis tourism. Anantara spas have created three “journeys” that utilise CBD (cannabidiol) oil – the second most active ingredient in cannabis. Over at Anantara Chiang Mai Resort, “healthy and nutrition-rich” cannabis-infused dishes have debuted on the menu at Service 1921 restaurant.
“There is growing interest in the therapeutic benefits of CBD,” said Chunxia Gao, group sirector of spa & wellness at MSpa International for the Asia region.
“With CBD safety guidelines ensuring the quality of the products, we can only foresee great success in CBD infused products, superfood choices, and CBD spa and wellness experiences.”
Costsaver rings up new itineraries across Australia, NZ
Costsaver, part of The Travel Corporation family, has expanded to Australia and New Zealand with the launch of three new itineraries that take travellers through vibrant cities and scenic nature.
Travellers can discover Australia’s urban landscape on the Cosmopolitan Sydney and Melbourne itinerary, where they will spend nine days exploring the Blue Mountains National Park in Sydney, checking out cafes in Canberra, and embarking on a street art tour in Melbourne and more.
For more adventurous travellers, the Tropical Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef trek takes guests through the tropical Daintree Rainforest, into the waters of the Great Barrier Reef, and on an Aboriginal tour to Cooya Beach. Treating Cairns as home base during this six-day adventure, travellers will indulge in the tastes of the Outback with fresh seafood and exciting nightlife.
The Essence of Southern New Zealand tour offers travellers a chance to explore the South Island. The seven-day tour begins in Christchurch before heading down to Lake Pukaki and Aoraki Mount Cook National Park. After a day of hikes and breathtaking views, travellers will journey to the fast-paced capital city of Queenstown for wine tasting and more. Travellers will then spend a day in the glacial village of Franz Josef before returning to Christchurch.
The new itineraries come with 40 optional experiences, ranging from surf lessons on Bondi Beach to spa treatments at Te Waonui Forest Retreat in New Zealand.
The programmes are open for bookings now for travel through 2023.
“We see a promising return to travel this year with more vaccinated travel lanes announced and consumer confidence returning. We believe Australia and New Zealand are a natural fit, offering unpackaged and personalised experiences for travellers to get the most out of their holidays,” said Mae Cheah, president of Trafalgar and Costsaver.
Thailand eases Covid-19 requirements for international arrivals
International travellers to Thailand will face simpler requirements from March 1, according to the Centre for COVID-19 Situation Administration (CCSA).
Fully vaccinated travellers will only be required to undergo one PCR test on arrival, followed by a self-administered antigen rapid test after five days.
All arrivals will still need to take an RT-PCR test within 72 hours before travelling to Thailand and spend their first night in hotel quarantine or at other approved quarantine facilities.
Tracing app MorChana will still need to be installed, and the self-test result submitted.
Additionally, the amount of travel insurance coverage will be reduced from US$50,000 to US$20,000 starting from March 1.
Earlier this month on February 1, Thailand resumed its Test & Go tourism scheme after suspending it over December 2021 and January 2022 due to Omicron. Under the scheme, overseas travellers who have been vaccinated against or have recovered from Covid-19 are allowed to enter Thailand and travel freely if they test negative on arrival.
However, they are required to stay at a pre-paid accommodation on their fifth day of stay in order to undergo a second PCR test. Travellers must remain in their rooms while awaiting test results.
CCSA data revealed that more than 300,000 travellers have applied for entry to Thailand and 80 per cent of the applications have been approved.
The majority of travellers are from Russia, Germany, France, the UK and Singapore, and the top three destinations are Bangkok, Phuket and Chon Buri.
Something Else will join Kuala Lumpur’s skyline this July
A brand new hotel group based in Kuala Lumpur, Else Retreats, will be opening its inaugural property in the Malaysian capital this July.
Housed in the 1930s Lee Rubber Building, the hotel will offer 49 keys ranging from the Mantra standard rooms to the Else Suite, all designed with soft palettes and natural tropical textures.
Wellness facilities include a gym, a gratitude space with floating meditation pods, and a pool house with cabanas that open out to Kuala Lumpur’s skyline.
For those who have to work, there will also be a Business Den comprising a private meeting room, a communal co-working space, as well as a sunken living room, drawing room and library.
There will also be two F&B concepts – The Raw Kitchen Hall, a casual-chic gathering place with Asian and Mediterranean flavours; and The Yellow Fin Horse, a restaurant that will serve both international cuisine and authentic Malaysian flavours.
Science, tourism reap Great Barrier Reef recovery
An underwater brigade of ecologists, biologists and tourism operators donned their neoprene “uniforms” and united off the coast of Cairns to check the results of a four-year Coral Nurture Program that aims to protect high-value Great Barrier Reef sites against future extreme weather events.
Funded by the Australian Government’s Reef Trust and the Great Barrier Reef Foundation, the programme is a joint partnership between University of Technology Sydney (UTS) scientists and the Port Douglas-based Wavelength Reef Cruises.
Lead UTS researcher and coral scientist, David Suggett, said the Coral Nurture Program was “an unprecedented success”.
Two years of “great growing conditions” have enabled recovering reef sites.
He added: “The collective action of operators planting tens of thousands of corals means we can now start to understand how, when and why coral replanting is successful. That is now feeding forward to new stewardship-based management for the Great Barrier Reef.”
Under the management of scientists, staff from reef tourism boats maximise their reef visits and tend to coral nurseries while tourists enjoy the wonders of the Great Barrier Reef nearby. They utilise a specially designed Coralclip device to attach corals to the reef without the need for chemical bonding agents. The Coralclip method is faster and cheaper than traditional out-planting methods and has contributed to high survival rates.
The Program has delivered coral restoration at a scale never seen before on the Great Barrier Reef, with more than 70,000 coral fragments planted across 27 sites and an average 85 per cent survival rate. Almost 50,000 of these fragments were planted by the crew from Wavelength Reef Cruises.
Craig Bond named MD of La Vie Hotels & Resorts
La Vie Hotels & Resorts, an independent hotel operator in the Asia Pacific region, has appointed Craig Bond to the role of Managing Director.
Based out of the group’s head office in Sydney, Bond will lead the company as it heads into a period of exponential growth, and will build the group’s reputation as an independent hotel operator of choice in the region.
Bond is an award-winning hotelier with a large portfolio of successfully developed and branded hotels, resorts, spas and restaurant concepts throughout the Asia Pacific region under his belt.
He joins the team from ONYX Hospitality Group in Bangkok, Thailand, where he was most recently executive vice president – COO.
Previously, Bond served as vice president, operations at Oakwood Worldwide Singapore and has also held roles across Australia as area general manager Oceania with Pan Pacific Hotels Group in Sydney, and area general manager with Mirvac Hotels and Resorts in Melbourne.
Alma Resort Cam Ranh welcomes director of sales
Son Hoang Le has joined Alma Resort Cam Ranh in Vietnam as director of sales.
The Vietnamese holds more than 16 years of experience in sales, marketing, events and operations at some of Vietnam’s well-known hotels. His last role was the director of room sales at the Caravelle Saigon.
Before that, he was the director of sales and marketing at Diamond Bay Vung Tau Resort & Spa and the director of sales at Hotel Majestic Saigon.
Son embarked on his hospitality career in early 2005 as a bellman at the Caravelle Saigon, where he spent the next 10 years also working as a receptionist, night supervisor and banquet sales executive, learning about various facets of the hotel business.
He moved to the Hotel Nikko Saigon to become a corporate sales executive, before progressing to the Pullman Hanoi where he became a sales manager and then an acting senior sales manager.
Hong Kong tightens social restrictions as Covid infections surge
Faced with an exponential spike in Covid-19 infections, the Hong Kong government has rolled out new containment measures including bringing forward school holidays, extended dining out curfews and compulsory testings for all residents.
This follows the chief executive’s urgent call last week for Hong Kong hotels to provide rooms as community isolation facilities.
The government has ordered all 7.5 million residents to undergo three rounds of compulsory Covid-19 tests, as confirmed case numbers swell past 66,000 across different districts. The situation has led to an overloaded medical system, with hospital capacity hitting past 90 per cent.
Social restrictions to set in include an earlier summer break for schools in March and April; mandatory closure of certain public premises such as gyms, entertainment venues and bars extended until April 20; and continued ban on dine-in at F&B outlets from 18.00.
The dine-in curfew has been in place since January 2022, and industry players have warned that 5,000 restaurants may close as a result of the extension.
At press time, the 2022-2023 Budget is being delivered by Hong Kong’s financial secretary. A slew of measures and policies to boost the local economy has been announced, including a fresh round of vouchers to encourage locals to spend on domestic tourism.
Langkawi eases entry barriers for arriving travellers
The Malaysian government has revised its standard operating procedures for the Langkawi International Travel Bubble (LITB) recently, increasing air connectivity by allowing tourists to enter via domestic flights from klia2, in addition to Kuala Lumpur International Airport.
The mandatory insurance coverage for tourists has also been reduced from US$80,000 to US$50,000 for the duration of their stay in Malaysia.
Children aged 12 and below are now allowed to enter the island with their fully vaccinated parents or guardians without having to show proof of vaccination.
LITB travellers are now allowed to travel to other destinations in the country after staying four days in Langkawi, compared with the previous requirement of an eight-day stay on the island.
According to the New Straits Times, Langkawi Development Authority (LADA) CEO, Nasaruddin Abdul Muttalib, said the revised procedures would enable LITB arrivals to increase.
The LITB, which started as a three-month pilot project on November 15, 2021, has been extended indefinitely until the country’s borders reopen.
Last week, health minister Khairy Jamaluddin shared that a realistic target for the reopening of the country’s borders was in early 2Q2022, and that the Ministry of Health was preparing guidelines for the country’s reopening.
The guidelines would have to be presented to the Covid-19 Pandemic Management Committee, chaired by the prime minister, as well as the Covid-19 quartet ministers before being brought to the Cabinet.
An announcement on when the country will reopen its borders will eventually be made by the prime minister, Ismail Sabri Yaakob.
Hong Kong’s tourism players are reserved about tourism recovery potential on the back of the Singapore-Hong Kong Vaccinated Travel Lane (VTL), which will come into effect on February 25.
Inbound agents told TTG Asia that Hong Kong’s current battle with Covid-19 infections and medical facility overload as well as a quarantine-on-arrival for travellers coming into Hong Kong could diminish the value of the new VTL.
Wing Wong, managing director of W Travel, which specialised in South-east Asian markets prior to the pandemic, retains a bleak outlook.
He said: “With the Hong Kong government and citizens fighting the outbreak now, I wonder if the Singapore government would reassess the viability of the Singapore-Hong Kong VTL. Unless Singapore residents need to visit relatives here in Hong Kong, I doubt they would make the trip now.”
Wong added that interest and enquiries from Singapore travellers in December were snuffed out by the latest outbreak.
Ronald Wu, executive director of Hong Kong’s Gray Line Tours, said that even though Hong Kong residents could enter Singapore quarantine-free, they would have to pay for a seven- to 14-day quarantine on return.
“Not everyone can afford that. Therefore, I don’t expect to see any travel demand (for the VTL) in next six months,” said Wu.
Offering an alternative optimistic view, Pinky Lee, general manager of KKday, told TTG Asia that the Singapore-Hong Kong VTL would pave the way for future tourism recovery between the two lands. For now, it would benefit business travellers who would not have to personally shoulder the cost of returning quarantine in Hong Kong.