ATTA, TAT to seek ways to lure European arrivals

The ATTA and the TAT will hold a workshop together on September 17. ATTA president Sisdivachr Cheewarattanaporn said its highlight would be how to boost the number of European travellers.

Sisdivachr accepted that this would be a hard task, but said the Kingdom should focus on attracting European visitors as other regions have not been hit by such a severe financial crisis and have kept travelling.

Juthaporn Rerngronasa, TAT deputy governor for international marketing of Europe, Africa, the Middle East and the Americas, said the number of European tourists had increased on average by 8.4 per cent annually over the past five years. Last year alone, it grew 13 per cent to 4.93 million.

This year, she expects growth of 6-7 per cent to 5.2 million people. Last year, tourists from Europe made up about 25 per cent of the 19.5 million foreign visitors to Thailand.

According to an ATTA release, the number of European tourists rose 0.09 per cent to 448,459 in the first seven months of this year compared with the same period in 2011. The figure was collected from bookings via travel agents. Juthaporn said that when the situation was good, the number of arrivals from Europe generally grew by double digits.

Currently, Europeans stay in Thailand for an average of 14 days, versus three to five days among Asians, so it is in the industry’s interest to keep them coming. However, she said the TAT would not be careless. It will monitor the situation closely and look for new markets, especially Asia and newly emerging markets in Europe, to offset the missing numbers from traditional markets.

Sisdivachr called for the government to help out tourism operators with incentives such as low-interest loans or even setting up an assistance fund, because the industry has contributed a lot of revenue to the national economy.

The government should also work with all operators, not only the big ones, to map out a clear direction for the industry, he said.