Amid slowdown in foreign visitors tourism focuses on domestic travellers
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DOMESTIC tourism is more in focus this year as fewer foreign flyers, especially from Russia and Europe, make the long trip here.
Businesses in some destinations, which are usually filled up by foreign holidaymakers, have turned their marketing efforts more toward the local market to maintain their sales.
The Tourism Business Association in Pattaya said last week that many hotels there have already shifted to wooing guests from Bangkok and other provinces due to lower numbers from the resort city’s main market – Russia.
Hotels and resorts in Phuket are also preparing special deals for the domestic market as they expect that the slowdown in regular customers from Europe might continue into the next quarter.
According to Kasikorn Research Centre, domestic travel is once again a prime target in 2015 to revive overall tourism.
The inbound traffic from Russia, Japan and some countries in Europe remained small in growth compared to before the political crisis, judging from advance |bookings made through travel companies for the first six months of this year.
Although business travel is reported to be recovering, as predicted by the Thailand Convention and Exhibition Bureau.
Thawatchai Arunyik, governor of the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT), has said hotels, travel agents, airlines and public organisations have created more integrated packages to stimulate local travel, focusing on families, groups and company staff.
TAT has launched a series of domestic campaigns such as “Fall in Love with Thailand”, “12 Cities You Can’t Say No To” and community-based activities to promote and boost arrivals to second-tier destinations.
Under martial law, which is now expected to extend to the general election early next year, the government is promoting tourism in domestic and overseas markets.
One of the key measures set to drive the industry is the re-introduction of the tax deduction for meetings and travel for the rest of this year.
KResearch and TAT now target expansion of 9.5 per cent in local travel to 148.5 million trips from this year’s projection of 136 million trips and also increase from 7 per cent last year.
Domestic revenue is expected to roll up 9.4 per cent to Bt772 billion this year.
