Dept pushes tourism sector to meet AEC challenge

The department, part of the Ministry of Tourism and Sports, is moving against time before the opening of the Asean Economic Community (AEC) in 2015. But cooperation between the government and private sectors in the industry for change remains loose, involving less than 50 per cent of the stakeholders, according to Arnupap Gaesornsuwan, director-general of the Department of Tourism. 

Thailand was behind Singapore and Malaysia, he said, in creating industry cohesion. If the trend continued, the Kingdom would lose its competitiveness to these countries regionally.

“We will do our best with the remaining time left to increase the country’s strength before the AEC opening,” he said.

Next year, the department will work more with all parties through meetings and seminars. He acknowledged it was a hard task because tourism is associated with a broad number of state agencies and businesses. Many business operators are not registered with associations, making it difficult to communicate with them when seeking practical solutions.

Also, the department will cooperate with the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) to improve and create a tourism landscape. Previously, it found working with the BMA hard because it is an independent local administration with its own directions. 

Setting up an institute in 2014 to recruit 32 tourism professionals under the AEC standardisation framework is a main focus. The Office of the Public Sector Development Commission is currently studying plans for this establishment. 

Under the guiding principles, it will be an independent agency to operate its own daily tasks and seeking its own income. Its independence will help its daily workflow to cope with the fast-changing tourism environment. 

In addition, a shortage of tour guides in some foreign languages will be solved. They include Chinese, Russian, Korean, and Bahasa of Indonesia. The department has worked jointly with Chiang Mai University to train 50 tour guide volunteers in Chinese with a Bt7 million budget to serve its city. The training programme will last seven months. 

If successful, it will be a model for other major tourism destinations to solve their own shortages.