In the first half of this year, the number of tourists visiting Thailand increased by more than 30%. The immigration office (passport control) has therefore trained and deployed 254 new agents to handle the ever-increasing number of travelers.
The Immigration Bureau (IB) saw the number of air travelers to Thailand rise to 41,9 million, an increase of 31,33% in the first half of this year.
An increase of 5 to 10 percent is expected in the second half of the year. The figures refer to the five international airports Suvarnabhumi, Don Mueang, Phuket, Chiang Mai and Hat Yai.
Fighting crime also took some time: in the first six months, 156 suspects were arrested, most of them foreigners. In the past six months, 3.461 foreigners have been refused entry. They were considered a threat to national security. Thirty of these were known as sex offenders.
Suvarnabhumi recorded an increase of 6,89 percent compared to the same period last year, Don Mueang 18,67 percent, mainly due to more flights from China, Korea and Japan.
Last year, the IB started to limit waiting times, among other things by using automatic passport control and deploying extra officials.
Source: Bangkok Post
I returned from Belgium on June 8 with Thai Airways
As usual fifteen minutes I think and through immigration. I did notice that more counters were open than before. It does indeed appear that immigration is deploying more staff.
What also struck me after passport control was that there was more control at customs.
Usually at 6 o'clock in the morning they are chatting with each other at customs.
Occasionally someone is stopped, after which the suitcase is briefly run through the scanner.
Now it was even a bit of a queue and suitcases were constantly being put through the scanner.
Perhaps a snapshot and someone had received a tip somewhere that they wanted to smuggle certain things into the country.
In any case, I had never seen them so active at customs.
This weekend I flew from Suvarnabhumi to Schiphol. In Bangkok in 10 minutes through security and immigration, but at Schiphol long queues for passport control on Saturday evening. Fortunately, EU passport holders were able to go through the self-scan fairly smoothly, but everyone else had to queue in a very long line. I only saw 2 open/staffed counters. Welcome to the Netherlands – but not really….