As part of its global tourism campaign, the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) is proactively launching initiatives to target the market in China. Now that Thailand has a new prime minister, the tourism industry is seeing a positive outlook, with TAT starting to put major efforts in encouraging more Chinese tourists to the country, as China remains one of the largest markets for Thailand. According to Mrs. Phornsiri Manoharn, Governor of TAT, the main priority is to encourage more tourists from the country’s major target markets, especially those within the Asian region, to come for their holidays, business trips and MICE activities in Thailand.

TAT plans to aggressively focus on tourism traffic from China using all kinds of strategies in the form of public relations and advertising, sales promotions, as well as alliances with related partners in the industry. In addition, as part of this plan to tap this potential market, TAT will soon set up a new office in Shanghai.

The “Amazing Thailand Amazing Value Media Fam Trips” were organized as TAT targeted to invite 100 press members to visit Thailand during January and February 2009.

“We will and have to try our best to convince local Chinese to consider visiting Thailand again using diversity in tourist attractions including pristine beaches, Thai food, golf courses, and boutique spas and hip resorts to attract them,” noted Mrs. Phornsiri.

In 2007, Thailand welcomed over 1,000,000 tourist arrivals from China for the first time, and during the first seven months of 2008, there was a total of 614,725 arrivals, a 22.36% increase on the same period of 2007.

Our photo shows Suvarnabhumi Airport, The New Bangkok International Airport (Photo aot).