Chumpol Confident Of Gain To 16 Million Arrivals Next Year

[livinthailandos]

Chumpol confident of gain to 16 million arrivals next year

The number of foreign tourists to Thailand should reach 16 million next year as the global economic crisis and local political problems have eased, Tourism and Sports Minister Chumpol Silpa-archa said yesterday.

As well, he said, the Thai economy was showing positive signs of improvement and the Thai Khem Kaeng stimulus spending programme would be a key factor that would spur tourism.

"I think the country has already passed the worst including the airport closures in late 2008, the cancellation of the Asean Summit in Pattaya and political violence in April. It is expected that the tourism industry will clearly improve next year on condition there are no new incidents," he said.

The minister made the comments as the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) introduced Suraphon Svetasreni as its new governor, filling a post that had been vacant for eight months.

Mr Suraphon said the TAT had set its own arrivals target at between 15 million and 15.5 million with total revenues of 560 to 570 billion baht. Arrivals this year are estimated at about 13.5 million, down by 7.4% from last year.

Trips by domestic tourists are forecast to rise to 90 million with total revenue of 430 billion baht, up from 87 million trips generating 400 billion this year.

"However, the TAT will try its best to increase the number of tourist arrivals to exceed the target set by the ministry," Mr Suraphon said.

Strategies to promote tourism next year will include waiving visa fees from March 2010 to the end of the year. The ministry also plans to develop new tourist attractions with 138 sites planned. It will also seriously promote medical tourism and try to solve problems such as illegal taxis, a frequent source of complaints. Online and social networking will be used more to promote Thai tourism as well.

Prakit Chinamourphong, the president of the Thai Hotels Association (THA), agreed with the latest arrivals estimate of 13 million for this year, saying the association had been reviewing figures and found arrivals still low, even in the current peak month.

The occupancy rate of hotels in Chiang Mai and Phuket stands at around 65%, down from 85% in a normal period, and in Bangkok it is lower than 60%.

"We think this reflects the fact that the tourism industry has not clearly recovered in December as much as we expected. We plan to talk with the new TAT governor about organising the first hotel mega-sale next year," Mr Prakit said.

The THA will ask about 700 member hotels as well as 4,000 non-members to join the event.

anyone out there have a comment for TAT newest predictions

Edited December 24, 2009 by livinthailandos

[robblok]

I don't believe anything anymore that is printed by them. They always write some optimistic note and its always going to get better. I have yet to see them write real figures about the lack of tourists. In my country i trust the goverment to at least give us the truth. They do at least write negative things too.

[bkkjames]

Interestingly I just received in the mail today the Asian Tourism Guide with vital stats for 2010 from a well known regional travel trade publication.

In the Thailand section it states that the MoTS targets 14 million visitors and US 15.9 billion in revenue in 2010.

Granted this data was probably gathered a month or two ago, but seems a big jump to 16 million as mentioned at the beginning of this topic by the same Ministry.