Thailand has long been a favourite for a two-week escape, but a growing number of visitors are treating it as something more permanent — and there's an official route to make that easy. It's called the Thailand Privilege Card, a paid membership that bundles long-stay visas with a stack of VIP perks, and it currently costs from roughly €17,300 up to around €133,350 depending on the tier.
Membership lengths run from five years up to 20-plus, with 10 and 15-year options in between. You don't have to live in the country for the full term — the value is that every arrival and departure becomes frictionless. Holders skip the usual visa paperwork and get fast-track immigration, lounge access, meet-and-greet services and limousine transfers at the airport. Day-to-day perks include golf course access and bookings at high-end restaurants, spas and wellness venues.
Speaking to Euronews Travel at World Travel Market in London, Manatase Annawat, president of Thailand Privilege Card Co., pitched the country as a practical base as much as a paradise. From Bangkok, most of Asia is a two-to-four-hour flight away, so members can settle in Thailand and still travel the region easily. He also leaned on quality-of-life arguments: internationally respected hospitals — some, he says, feel more like hotels — a famed service culture, and an estimated 20,000 restaurants nationwide, which he reckons would take a decade to work through.
The practical support side may be the real selling point. The card team helps with opening bank accounts, getting driving licences and handling the routine immigration reporting that long-term residents otherwise face. Annawat's summary: whenever you arrive and need help, someone is there to assist.
Where do members actually live? Bangkok leads, but quieter options appeal too — Chiang Mai in the mountainous north and Phuket in the beach-heavy south. Annawat singles out retirees as an ideal fit, noting that a pension stretches considerably further in Thailand than in most of Europe, and that locals generally welcome foreign residents rather than treating them as outsiders. With warm weather year-round and everything from beaches to mountains within one country, the pitch is essentially Thailand as a place to visit, stay longer, and eventually retire.
Who is this actually for? It's not budget backpacking — the entry price alone rules that out. But for affluent travellers, remote workers or retirees eyeing extended Asian stays, it compares favourably to juggling tourist visa runs or navigating separate long-stay visa routes on your own. The trade-off is straightforward: you're paying a premium for convenience, bureaucratic hand-holding and airport red-carpet treatment. If Thailand is somewhere you'd realistically spend months at a time, the maths can start to make sense.
Story first reported by Euronews Travel.
