Govt wants 500 home-stays within five years

“This is one of the plans to improve tourism competitiveness when the country opens its doors in 2015 to the Asean Economic Community,” Suphon Sriphan, the new director-general of the department, said yesterday.

At least 186 home-stay lodgings have been counted throughout the country, many of them operating illegally. However, the department intends to upgrade their standards to gain more customers as well as promote the new segment.

Vietnam will soon become a major rival in this segment as the government there is promoting and encouraging people to build home-stays all over the country, Suphon
said.

The private sector has urged officials to add more annual events, such as Loy Krathong, in provinces after the floods subside to help restore domestic tourism in the short term.

The Federation of Thai Tourism Associations has called on the government to organise the festival in Sing Buri, Angthong and Lop Buri, which have been heavily inundated, besides the yearly celebrations in Sukhothai, Tak and Ayutthaya.

This year, Loy Krathong is scheduled to take place nationwide on November 10. The federation said this event would help restore tourism especially in hard-hit flood
areas.

To keep international tourists coming to the country, the Thai-Japan Tourism Business Association has appealed to the government to focus on key markets including Japan, as many tourists should return to Thailand after the partial recovery from the natural crisis there.
Sansern Ngaorangsi, deputy governor of the Tourism Authority of Thailand, said TAT would
work on attracting first-timers to Thailand as regular customers might suspend their travel plans because of the flooding.

The main targets will be mostly countries in Asia as well as high-end holiday makers from Western countries.