What the TDAC is
The Thailand Digital Arrival Card, TDAC, is the online replacement for the paper arrival card that foreign nationals once filled in on the aircraft. It is mandatory for foreign nationals entering Thailand, it is filed online at tdac.immigration.go.th, and it must be submitted within the seventy two hours before arrival. There is no fee. Each traveller receives a confirmation with a QR code, which is presented at immigration on arrival.
Two characteristics cause most of the trouble. The first is that seventy two hour window, which is a ceiling and not a floor: you cannot file early to get it out of the way, so it must be scheduled rather than remembered. The second is that airlines increasingly check for a TDAC record before they will board a passenger to Thailand, which means the consequence of forgetting is felt in Riyadh, Dubai or Doha, at a counter, with the family assembled and the flight closing, rather than at Suvarnabhumi where it could be fixed quietly.
The seventy two hour window, managed
Work backwards from the scheduled arrival time in Thailand, not the departure time from the Gulf. A flight leaving Jeddah late at night arrives in Bangkok the following afternoon, and the window opens seventy two hours before that arrival. In practice we set two reminders: one when the window opens, and a second twenty four hours before departure, which is the last comfortable point at which to discover that somebody's passport number was mistyped.
File in the morning of your own time zone rather than the night before travel. The system is used by every arriving foreign national and the last hours before a departure bank are its busiest. More importantly, a mistake found at nine in the morning is a five minute correction, and the same mistake found at one in the morning with a car booked for four is a different experience entirely.
What you need in front of you
- Every passport in the party, open at the biodata page: full name exactly as printed, passport number, nationality, date of birth, date and place of issue.
- Flight details: airline, flight number, date and time of arrival in Thailand, and the airport of arrival.
- The Thailand address for the first night, with the postcode: hotel, villa, serviced apartment or private residence. Not a district name.
- The country you are travelling from and the city you boarded in, which for a connecting itinerary is not always the same as your home country.
- An email address per traveller, or one address that will receive the whole family's confirmations, which is usually simpler.
- Basic health declaration answers as the form requests them at the time of filing.
Two of those items are worth expanding. The address must be the actual address of the first night's accommodation with a postcode, and immigration can and occasionally does ask to see the booking that matches it. If the family is moving from a Bangkok hotel to a Phuket villa on day three, the Bangkok hotel is the address on the form. And the name must match the passport exactly, including the full string of given names and any patronymic elements as printed. Arabic names are frequently rendered differently across documents, and the passport is the only version that counts here.
Filing for a large family
The system allows a group submission, and for a party of any size that is the sane route. Our method is the same every time and it removes almost all of the risk.
- One named person owns the task. Not the principal, not everybody: one person, usually the travel manager or the eldest of the middle generation.
- Build a spreadsheet a week in advance with a row per traveller and a column for each field the form requires. Fill it from the passports themselves, not from memory or from an old booking.
- Have a second person check the spreadsheet against the passports. Transposed digits in a passport number are the single most common error and are invisible to the person who typed them.
- When the window opens, file the whole party in one sitting from the spreadsheet, which takes a fraction of the time and eliminates the risk of one traveller being forgotten.
- Infants and children each need their own submission. They are travellers, not attachments to a parent's record.
- Household staff travelling with the family need their own submissions too, and their visa position should already have been resolved separately.
Save every QR code twice: to the phone of the person managing the group, and printed on paper, one sheet per traveller, carried in the hand baggage. Paper is not a nostalgia; it is what works when a phone is flat, a roaming connection has not activated and the immigration hall is full.
The errors we actually see
| Error | Where it surfaces | Prevention |
|---|---|---|
| Filed too early, outside the 72 hour window | The form refuses the submission | Set a reminder at the window opening, timed off the arrival |
| Not filed at all for one child | Departure gate in the Gulf, or the immigration counter | One spreadsheet row per traveller, checked twice |
| Passport number mistyped | Immigration counter, record does not match | Second person verifies against the passport |
| Name entered short, missing given names | Immigration counter | Copy the machine readable name exactly as printed |
| Wrong arrival date after a schedule change | Departure gate | Refile after any flight change, do not assume it carries over |
| District entered instead of a full address | Immigration may query the address | Use the property's written address and postcode |
| Filed on an unofficial site charging a fee | Money lost, and often no valid record exists | Use only tdac.immigration.go.th |
That last row deserves a paragraph of its own. Because the TDAC is new, mandatory and searched for heavily, a large number of intermediary sites now offer to file it for a fee. Some are simply overpriced form fillers. Others collect a full set of passport data from a wealthy family and provide nothing in return. The official filing is free and the official address is tdac.immigration.go.th. If a site asks for payment, it is not the government.
Changes, corrections and reissues
If a flight is changed, delayed to another day, or rebooked onto a different carrier, the arrival details on the submission no longer match. Refile. It costs nothing and takes minutes, and a mismatch between the record and the boarding pass is exactly the sort of discrepancy that turns a thirty second counter interaction into a five minute one with a tired family behind you.
If a passport is replaced between filing and travel, refile with the new document. If a traveller drops out of the party, their submission simply goes unused. If a traveller is added late, file for them as soon as the window allows, and remember that a person added forty eight hours before departure still needs the same care as everyone else.
At the Gulf airport
Check in agents at Gulf airports now routinely ask to see evidence of the TDAC for passengers travelling to Thailand, and the practice has tightened rather than loosened. Present the printed sheets at check in without being asked; it visibly shortens the interaction and it removes any question of a family being held back while an agent telephones a supervisor.
Allow for the ordinary realities of a Gulf summer departure: the airports are at their annual peak in June and July, the flights are full, and a party of fifteen with thirty bags is not a fast check in even when everything is correct. We ask families to be at the airport earlier than they think necessary, to check in as one group rather than in waves, and to keep the passports and the TDAC sheets together in one folder held by one person.
On arrival
At Suvarnabhumi, the QR code is presented with the passport at the immigration counter. The officer checks the record, takes a photograph and fingerprints, and stamps the passport. Read the stamp before you leave the counter: the date on it is the date by which you must depart, and it is the operative number for the rest of the trip regardless of what you were told before you flew.
One point of reassurance. The TDAC is an arrival card, not an entry permission. Filing it correctly does not grant you entry, and the permitted length of stay for your nationality is a separate question governed by the visa exempt position, which for GCC passports is currently in flux: the exemption currently runs to sixty days, with an approved reduction to thirty days pending publication in the Royal Gazette. Confirm the current allowance with the Royal Thai Embassy in your own country before booking. The arrival card is the paperwork; the stamp is the permission.
The Thai Immigration Bureau operates the TDAC and is the only authority on its requirements. File only at tdac.immigration.go.th, never through a paid intermediary. For questions about your permitted length of stay as distinct from the arrival card itself, consult the Royal Thai Embassy or Consulate in your own country before you travel.
Continue reading.
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.
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