Tourism chiefs tap Big Data to boost arrivals

[webfact]

Tourism chiefs tap Big Data to boost arrivals

By Kwanchai Rungfapaisarn 
The Nation 

 

Siripakorn Cheawsamoot, deputy governor for policy and planning at the Tourism Authority of Thailand, briefs the media yesterday on the Tourism Smart Data Management project.

 

THE Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) is moving forward with the development of a Big Data system to cater to the growth in the number of tourist arrivals.
 

The authority is seeking to improve its efficiency in the era of the digital economy and better serve tourists who are increasingly relying on technology as a significant tool for managing their travel needs.

 

The system will allow tourists to access travel information that lets them complete their trip planning more quickly and with greater convenience.

 

 The TAT will initiate a “Tourism Smart Data Management” project so that information systems on tourism will be enhanced and developed. Such information will be managed and analysed, and then the resulting added commercial value can contribute to the development of the country. The project will be connected with the Kingdom's strategic plan for the development of tourism and help the industry to become more sustainable while reaching the targeted segment of tourists so as to cater to their demands.

 

The project can be a pilot to help the TAT achieve its plan for promoting a greater number of tourist arrivals in the coming years.

 

For 2018, more than 37 million foreign tourists are expected to visit Thailand and they will create about Bt3 trillion of revenue for the country, up 9 per cent over last year. About Bt2 trillion of that amount will come from foreign tourists, up 9.44 per cent over last year, and a further Bt1 trillion from Thai travellers, an increase of 8.16 per cent over last year. The top 10 source countries for visitors are China, Russia, Malaysia, the US, the United Kingdom, South Korea, Japan, Australia, India and Germany.

 

Siripakorn Cheawsamoot, TAT's deputy governor for policy and planning, said the authority will this month develop what it calls a “social listening system” under which it will collect significant data - such as the voices of customers and suppliers as well as weather forecasts and alerts and other helpful resources - from government and private organisations. The project will start operation and provide useful information to those involved in the tourism industry, both government and private operators, in December.

 

"The key challenge of the Tourism 4.0 era is the trend of using digital tools. It has become so popular for individual tourists and many travellers to use digital technology for all of their trips, both before and after travelling,” said Siripakorn.

 

“So, the TAT has developed Smart Data to be one of the tools to handle these challenges. It can keep and analyse the data that will benefit the tourism industry in the future.

 

“The TAT foresees the benefit and importance of applying digital technology in the organisation. Given this, the authority started the Tourism Smart Data Management project, which will become a key fundamental in smart data management on tourism, to be collected by the TAT and partners in the government and private sectors.

 

Such tourism data will be classified and analysed to find its correlation, and to be scrutinised for maximum utility in the development of the local tourism industry," said Siripakorn, who gave the example of using tourism information in many strategic activities, ranging from community development and generating revenue to tourism destinations to setting plans for the tourism development of the country. 

 

Siripakorn also spoke of the use of Smart Data in supporting the TAT's policy to promote tourism in the secondary cities, and that this plan will be prioritised by the government with the aim of reducing the concentration of tourism spending in the main cities and thus see more income flow into rural communities.

 

Further, Siripakorn said Smart Data will be an effective marketing tool in stimulating stakeholders in the tourism industry to check on information regarding the trends in tourism, so that they will be able to make preparations and develop their own locations as tourism destinations.

 

“Meanwhile, we at TAT have made an application called Thailand Tourism Map that provides information about 55 secondary tourism cities. The app technology will allow individual tourists to select different tourism destinations and tourism routes for their trip planning. The process can be conducted quite easily at their fingertips,” Siripakorn said.

 

Source: http://www.nationmultimedia.com/detail/Tourism/30356734

 

-- © Copyright The Nation 2018-10-19

[Samui Bodoh]

"... The TAT will initiate a “Tourism Smart Data Management” project so that information systems on tourism will be enhanced and developed. Such information will be managed and analysed, and then the resulting added commercial value can contribute to the development of the country. The project will be connected with the Kingdom's strategic plan for the development of tourism and help the industry to become more sustainable while reaching the targeted segment of tourists so as to cater to their demands..."

 

"...Such tourism data will be classified and analysed to find its correlation, and to be scrutinised for maximum utility in the development of the local tourism industry," said Siripakorn, who gave the example of using tourism information in many strategic activities, ranging from community development and generating revenue to tourism destinations to setting plans for the tourism development of the country..." 

 

Er... Ahem...

 

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?

 

I can't remember when I last saw sooooo many buzzwords in a single 'news' article. 

 

If I may translate;

 

'We will look at data and use it'.

 

I cannot say if traumatic brain injury is required to work at the TAT, but it does seem that it'd be useful...

 

[zzaa09]

'Tis a shame that we obsessively rely on all things tourism and associated.

 

Terribly destructive.

[stanleycoin]

That's nice 

[quadperfect]

Lets hope the new tourist arrivals want to go visit farms and rural thailand because the coastal thailand is already maxed out.

its actually nearly destroyed. 

[bluesofa]

3 hours ago, webfact said:

THE Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) is moving forward with the development of a Big Data system to cater to the growth in the number of tourist arrivals.

cater to the growth = massage the growth (upwards)

I can translate this Orwellian New-speak stuff, no problem.

 

[unamazedloso]

i read and reread and have no idea what the hell they are talking about.

something to do with technology to make things easier for tourists and the tat. yeh, its called a smart phone! forigners help out each other on line to inform themselves on things to do and how to go about it.

Problem solved i guess....

I think there is no need for a tat at all actually. would be a better place and i wouldnt need to be confused by forseeing, growth, committees, etc.. Stoopid made up dribble and numbers to make it look like someone's doing a job here. Come on seriously it would be better doing nothing at all. Then i wouldnt need to criticize and we all know thais and especially government cant deal with criticism. 

[RichardColeman]

I believe this gif illustrates official and non official daily tourists numbers

 

[mikebell]

He has a smart suit to match his phone.

[Darcula]

4 hours ago, webfact said:

increasingly relying on technology as a significant tool for managing their travel needs

 

Mostly, everyone in the world calls it a google search.

 

[bluesofa]

12 minutes ago, Darcula said:

Mostly, everyone in the world calls it a google search.

Everyone except TAT, they're different and have special needs.

 

[madmitch]

I thought Big Data was going to be Big Joke's replacement in the Tourist Police!

 

 

[bluesofa]

15 minutes ago, madmitch said:

I thought Big Data was going to be Big Joke's replacement in the Tourist Police!

He was going to be, but the numbers just didn't add up - in the brown envelope.

 

[inThailand]

Big Data system. 555!

 

Does this mean more paper demanded from government agencies? 

[bluesofa]

4 minutes ago, inThailand said:

Big Data system. 555!

 

Does this mean more paper demanded from government agencies? 

Yes, now A4 is not enough. Big Data demands everything on sheets of A3.

 

[RichardColeman]

5 hours ago, webfact said:

The system will allow tourists to access travel information that lets them complete their trip planning more quickly and with greater convenience.

Guessing the sponsored ads will be by Life assurane companies

[Oziex1]

Big Data to manage the ever increasing big numbers of TAT's predictions and monthly reports, it adds up.

[inThailand]

the authority will this month develop what it calls a “social listening system”

 

This doesn't sound like a normal tourism project. Pre-election data gathering on voters? 

[Dave67]

Wow a "BIG" Data system. Bigger than Billy BIggs Big brother from Bigsville

[bluesofa]

1 minute ago, inThailand said:

the authority will this month develop what it calls a “social listening system”

 

This doesn't sound like a normal tourism project. Pre-election data gathering on voters? 

My friend had one of those:

He said it was very clear. Never missed a worm that was said.

[CGW]

"Big Data" is a buzz word cropping up more and more in the last year or so, translated I take it to mean that in the past years "they" have been collecting as much information on "us" as possible, most of which was agreed to by us, some was not and they were caught out, (but they kept it anyway!) with that information they now have lots of algorithms, if they can now use the stored information they have against us, they will ????

Or am I wrong and the information stored will be for the betterment of us all ❓

[Redline]

I wonder how long it took someone to write this mumbo jumbo.  A waste of time

Edited October 19, 2018 by Redline