With the Asean Economic Community (AEC) coming into effect next year and the number of Caucasian and Chinese tourists continuing to fall, the TAT is attempting to stem the haemorrhaging tourist numbers by attracting more visitors from neighbouring countries.
While Asean visitors to Thailand in the first nine months of 2014 fell by 11.3 per cent compared to the same period in 2013 to just 4.7 million visitors, the TAT hopes to attract some eight million Asean tourists in 2015 – the same number as originally targeted this year.
Representing a 12 per cent increase on this year’s amended and reamended target, it is hoped that tourists from Asean countries will inject about Bt225 billion (US$ 6.937 billion*) into the Thai economy and the national tourism body will soon embark on an Asean-wide marketing campaign promoting Thailand as a weekend getaway destination for Asean residents.
According to the TATs governor Thawatchai Arunyik the “ASEAN to Thailand” project is one of several tourism promotion activities “to promote Thailand’s tourism as a must-visit destination among Asean citizens”.
However, on a recent TAT sponsored media familiarisation trip (famtrip) with the key objective being “enhancing the recognition of Thailand as an attractive and fun place to visit by Asean countries” The Establishment Post was left wondering what it was TAT was attempting to promote.
Rather than attempting to highlight Thailand’s unique differences the focus was on the commonalities between Thailand and other Asean countries. This ignores the fact that one thing tourists often like to travel to a foreign country for is to see and do something new and different from what they can see or do at home.
Read more: Thailand Tourism Pins Hopes on AEC http://www.establishmentpost.com/thailand-tourism-pins-hopes-on-aec/#ixzz3JUMCToJW
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