The new tourism minister of Thailand, Mr. Chumpol Silpa-acha, is pushing for a tourism revival package to aid tourism enterprises hard hit by the global financial slowdown and the impact of the country’s political instability.
The plan is expected to involve a 3.8 billion baht (US$110 million) aid package to assist Thai tourism operators severely affected by the eight-day closure of Suvarnabhumi Airport in late November last year.
“I will try to fight for this amount to materialize within the first quarter of this year”, Chumpol said. He announced another 15 billion baht, pending Cabinet approval, was earmarked to be injected through Thai commercial banks as a three percent interest rate subsidy on soft loans for tourism enterprises to tide them over.
Minister Chumpol is also seeking an ad-hoc tourism budget of 1.9 billion baht as proposed by the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT). This special sum is on top of TAT’s 2009 annual budget of around 4.4 billion baht. Of the amount, TAT plans to spend around 1.2 billion baht on international marketing and the rest on the domestic market.
Chumpol said he would try to get Cabinet approval for the first 700 million baht for domestic tourism marketing by end of January and the rest by end of March. He also vowed to follow in the footsteps of his predecessor, Mr. Weerasak Kowsurat, who planned to focus on both the quality and quantity of tourists, and group interrelated Thai tourism attractions into 14 tourism clusters.
His recovery budget proposal and tourism policy comes at a time when the Thai travel trade is struggling to survive the double blow of the global financial situation and national political instability. The downturn, which worsened from the third quarter of last year, forced an estimated 412 Thai travel agencies – of a total of 11,186 companies – to close down last year, according to the Ministry of Tourism and Sports’ Office of Tourism Development (OTD).
OTD cited the lack of cash flow and declining tourist demand as the key reasons for the agencies’ closing down.
However, Thai Travel Agents Association president and Kangwal Holiday managing director, Mr. Charoen Wangananont, said the number of closures would be minimal, as companies would resort to cutting operations cost to maintain their cash flow. Association of Thai Travel Agents president, Mr. Apichart Sankary, said the Thai travel trade needed financial support from the government to survive the difficult times. He urged the government to introduce a temporary tax-free period for travel companies and subsidies for SMEs. He added a temporary policy to reduce visa fees, especially for Chinese and Indian tourists, would help entice more travellers from these two potential markets.
Meanwhile, Thai Hotels Association president, Mr. Prakit Chinamourphong, said despite the recession in the US and Europe, those in the niche markets would still be travelling. “However, their spending power will be reduced by around 10 to 30 percent, so special tourism deals will help entice them to choose Thailand. The deals will also help maintain the number of repeat visitors to Thailand”, Mr. Prakit said.
