Travellers are furious when TUI rebooks their flights from Krabi to Phuket in Thailand, an airport that is over two hours away by car.
The tour operator TUI is now contacting several of its travellers with information that their flights to Koh Lanta and nearby areas have changed.
Instead of landing at Krabi Airport, the plane goes to Phuket – which is over two hours away by car.
The move is a problem for many travellers as one of Thailand’s entry permits – which many tourists call “Thailand Passports” – specifies that you may not travel more than two hours by car from the airport to the hotel where you have to stay one night to get the result from PCR test taken after landing.
In the case of a longer travel time, another entry permit must be used.
Many travellers complain that the information from TUI has been incomplete and late.
Renée Bertilsson is one of the victims: “On TUI’s side it says that the flight will go to Krabi, as we have booked. But when I go to Copenhagen Kastrup’s website and search with flight numbers on departures, it says Phuket“.
She and her husband are booked to travel in early January. She does not really know how her journey will be affected by the change of airport.
“If it is the case that instead of Krabi we will land on Phuket, then we must apply for new Thailand passports. Applying for them and getting them approved takes time, it takes a lot of paperwork and documentation on hotel bookings, taxis, testing, and more.”
Adam Györki, communications manager at TUI Resor, tells the newspaper Expressen that a redevelopment of the airport means that TUI has had to move flights to Phuket.
According to Adam Györki, four flights over Christmas and New Year are affected.
To the criticism from affected travellers, Adam Györki responds: “We could probably have been faster with the information. We have tried to inform as quickly as we can. The reason why it takes time for us to inform is that we manually adjust every single booking and look at how we solve it with accommodation and transport in the best way.”
Source: Expressen