TAT to kick start tourism recovery
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The Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) has established a five-pronged approach to rebuilding domestic tourism in Thailand after severe flooding in the country. The organisation expects that the flooding would cause domestic travel to drop by 2% as a result of flooding. That equates to 1.8 million trips that will not happen from the forecast 91 million for the year.
The campaign will begin by promoting intra-regional travel between November and January, encouraging people to visit local attractions rather than travelling longer distances to popular resorts like Pattaya or Hua Hin.
Once the flooding has dissipated in the new year, TAT will begin promoting other avenues. It will start pushing cross regional travel from around the country to Central Thailand and Bangkok, by inviting 10 travel agents from each province to see attractions in the area so they can develop tour packages. Also in January, the authority will tout niche products such as medical and corporate tourism to areas unaffected by flooding, particularly in the Northeast. Health and wellness is a vibrant industry in Thailand and the tourism board will be promoting this sector during the recovery process for flood affected Thais.
Finally, in order to rebuild confidence among tourists in the international markets, expat associations will be contacted to help promote Thailand as a safe and secure destination across international networks. Speaking to The Nation, Thawatchai Arunyik, Deputy Governor for Domestic Marketing, said; “We call this project ‘Local to Global’. We’ll ask Scandinavians in Hua Hin, Japanese in Chiang Mai, Germans in the Northeast and Europeans in Pattaya to help invite tourists to Thailand after the flooding.”