Thailand steps up efforts to attract international tourists

 Thailand steps up efforts to attract international tourists

In order to achieve the goal of bringing tourism revenue in 2022 to half of what it was before the Covid-19 pandemic, the Thai tourism industry is implementing many efforts to promote the country's opening-up program, creating favorable conditions for the tourism industry. benefit to attract more international tourists to Thailand.

International tourists at Suvarnabhumi Airport, Thailand

On December 16, the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) announced a huge marketing campaign attended by around 26 regional and international social media influencers to help promote Thailand opening program. The campaign will be launched in March 2022 with 26 influential people on social networks in many fields.

Titled “Fantastic New Chapters: Thailand Has It All, From A to Z”, the project will focus on major influencers, with a social media following of one million or more. up, to represent the tourism products that Thailand wants to promote in the coming period. TAT Director General Yuthasak Supasorn said the project aims to reach at least 26 million people around the world.

TAT has assigned its offices in countries around the world to recruit potential candidates for the project. One of the criteria for selecting 26 attendees was that their names would be based on 26 Roman letters. And the first person selected, representing the letter A in the alphabet, is the famous Formula 1 driver Alex Albon. The racer currently has 1.3 million followers on Instagram, 427,000 followers on Twitter and 325,000 followers on Facebook. Mr. Yuthasak affirmed that this massive global marketing campaign is essential for Thailand to promote the country's readiness to welcome international visitors.

A day earlier, the Ministry of Tourism and Sports of Thailand also put into operation a portal called Entry Thailand, with many tools to help international visitors more easily handle complicated procedures in the early stages. pandemic period. This portal will provide visitors with information and documents that need to be prepared before entry, along with links to relevant organizations and agencies such as websites of hotels that meet SHA+ standards, insurance Covid-19, register for Thailand Pass or download the MorChana app. In addition, the portal also includes complete information on immigration procedures, value-added tax refund as well as online notifications to the tourist police through an application.

According to the Ministry of Tourism and Sports of Thailand, the tourism portal will help centralize scattered information related to tourism in Thailand, such as tourist attractions, transportation or Thai cuisine. . In the coming period, the department will convince other government agencies to integrate their services into this common portal. It will also leave the door open for businesses looking to connect their products and services with Entry Thailand.

In addition to the above projects, TAT also plans to launch the first phase of a tourism project in the virtual world (metaverse) next year. Accordingly, visitors will be able to participate in virtual tours to durian farms, a famous specialty fruit of Thailand. Some famous Thai fruit farms have agreed to participate in this project with the introduction of their farms and products in the virtual world of tourism.

Mr. Yuthasak said that in the coming time, Thailand will apply a new approach, directing tourists to focus on tourist experiences instead of just looking to increase the number of visitors. To achieve this goal, TAT has set three performance targets for next year: hotel bookings must reach 50% compared to 25% to 30% this year; the proportion of passengers on flights reached 70% and the spending of each international and domestic tourist reached 62,580 baht and 4,100 baht respectively.

At the same time, as the Covid-19 epidemic situation in Thailand is gradually improving, the Thai Government hopes to soon open the border with neighboring countries, bringing the number of international visitors next year to between 8 and 15. million people, generating revenue from 1.3 to 1.8 trillion baht for the economy by 2022. He said that if this development momentum is maintained, by 2023 Thailand will welcome about 20 million visitors. International visitors.