Nannies and household staff: bringing yours or hiring here.

Two different arrangements, often confused

Bringing your own staff and hiring locally are separate decisions with separate paperwork, and families frequently start one and end up needing the other. Bringing your own means a nanny, cook, driver or aide who already works in your household in Riyadh, Dubai, Kuwait or Doha, who travels with you, who knows the children and the routine, and whose presence is the reason the trip is manageable. Hiring locally means engaging Thai staff through an agency for the duration of the stay, most often childcare, and it is a service arrangement with the villa or an agency rather than an employment relationship you carry.

Most large parties end up with both: the family's own nanny who handles the small children, plus local staff who supplement her so that she is not on duty for four weeks without a day off. That combination usually works best, and the planning question is simply which parts of the household's routine require someone who already knows the family and which parts do not.

The visa question, stated plainly

Accompanying domestic staff enter Thailand on their own passports under whatever rules apply to their own nationality, and that is the whole of it. There is no dependent or accompanying staff category that attaches them to the family's entry. This matters enormously in practice, because household staff in Gulf homes commonly hold Filipino, Indonesian, Indian, Sri Lankan, Nepali, Ethiopian or Kenyan passports, and Thailand's entry treatment of those passports differs sharply. Some are visa exempt for tourism, some require a visa applied for in advance, and some face substantially more scrutiny at the border than the family they travel with.

So the process starts with the passport, not with the trip. For each member of staff travelling, we check the current requirement for that nationality with the Royal Thai Embassy or consulate that has jurisdiction, and where a visa is needed we start early, because tourist visa applications for domestic workers travelling with an employer often attract requests for supporting documents: employment letters, the employer's own booking and itinerary, proof of accommodation, proof of return travel and sometimes evidence of the ongoing employment in the home country. None of that is unusual and all of it takes time. The Thailand Digital Arrival Card, filed online within seventy two hours of arrival, applies to staff exactly as it applies to the family.

For the family's own entry, GCC nationals currently enter Thailand visa exempt for tourism, with the exemption currently running to sixty days and an approved reduction to thirty days pending publication. Confirm the allowance that will apply on your travel dates with the Royal Thai Embassy in your country before booking, and remember that the answer for your staff may be entirely different from the answer for you. Our main visa guides cover the family's options, including longer stay routes, in full.

What accompanying staff may lawfully do here

This is the part that is usually glossed over and should not be. A person admitted to Thailand as a tourist is admitted to visit, not to work, and working in Thailand requires a work permit. Thailand also maintains a list of occupations restricted to Thai nationals, and domestic and manual household work has historically featured in that framework; the list has been amended over the years and the practical treatment of a visiting employer's own staff is not the same as the treatment of someone employed by a Thai household. We are not going to pretend the position is crisper than it is, and any advisor who gives you a confident one line answer is guessing.

What we tell families is this. Staff who travel with a family, stay in the family's accommodation, and continue their existing overseas employment while accompanying their employer on holiday are in a different practical position from staff engaged to work for a household in Thailand, but the distinction is one of fact and degree and it is assessed by Thai authorities, not by us. If your stay is long, if staff are being paid locally, or if anyone is being engaged to work in a property you own here, that is a question for a Thai lawyer or licensed labour consultant before travel, and the Department of Employment within the Ministry of Labour is the authority. Families who own property in Thailand and want permanent household staff should be hiring Thai nationals through proper employment, which is straightforward and which we can arrange.

Rooms, hours and the practical side

• Staff accommodation confirmed in writing before booking: many luxury villas have a staff room or two, but not for four people, and hotels charge for extra rooms.
• A separate room rather than a sofa in a child's room, which matters for the staff member's rest and for the household's privacy.
• Meals arranged and paid for as part of the stay, not left to be negotiated daily with a villa cook.
• Days off written into the plan, with local staff covering, because a nanny on duty for a month without a break stops being useful in week three.
• Transport arrangements, since staff will need to move with the family and should not be expected to find their own way anywhere.
• Insurance that covers accompanying staff, which many family travel policies do not do automatically.
• Passports held by the staff themselves, always.

That last item is not negotiable in any arrangement our office handles. Every person travelling keeps their own passport, and any property or agency that suggests otherwise is one we do not work with. It is also, for what it is worth, what the law expects.

Hiring locally: what vetted childcare actually means

Local childcare in Thailand is easy to find and highly variable. The reliable route is through an established agency or through the villa estate or hotel, which carries the arrangement and takes responsibility for it. What we ask for, and what a family should ask for regardless of who is arranging it, is a Thai national identity check and copy on file, a police background check, verifiable references from previous families that we call rather than read, first aid and paediatric CPR certification with a date on it, and a clear statement of what languages the person actually speaks rather than what the agency says they speak. English competence varies enormously and matters more than any other soft factor.

Hotel babysitting services and resort kids' clubs are a different product and should be judged separately. Resort clubs are generally well run and safety conscious, and the questions worth asking are about ratios, sign out procedure, whether staff photograph the children, and whether the consent form you are handed at sign in contains an image release, which it often does and which we routinely decline. For in room or in villa sitting, ask who the sitter actually is: some hotels use their own trained staff and some subcontract to an agency, and the difference in vetting is real.

The handover, which is where it works or fails

Local staff joining a household mid stay need a proper handover and almost never get one. We write a one page household brief in Thai covering the children's names and ages, allergies and medical notes, the daily routine, meal times and what the children eat, the rules on photography, which areas of the house staff enter and when, and who to call. It is given to the person on the first morning and to the agency in advance. Half an hour of this at the start prevents the friction that otherwise accumulates for four weeks, and it lets your own nanny hand over with confidence rather than supervise a stranger indefinitely.

Visa treatment differs by passport and changes, and the rules on foreign nationals working in Thailand are enforced by Thai authorities on the facts. Confirm entry requirements for each staff member's nationality with the Royal Thai Embassy or consulate with jurisdiction over their location, and take advice from a Thai lawyer or the Department of Employment, Ministry of Labour, before any staff member performs work in Thailand.

This briefing is general information, not legal, tax or investment advice. Thai rules change frequently and individual cases differ. Verify current requirements with the relevant authorities, including the Immigration Bureau, the Board of Investment, the Land Department, the Department of Business Development and the Revenue Department, and take advice on your own facts before acting.