New ATTA president is a man on a mission

Charoen Wangananont, ATTA’s newly elected president, said he would take representatives from tour operators and hotels, as well as travel entrepreneurs, to attend major tourism trade shows, including the “International Tourism Boerse”, scheduled to be held in Germany in the first quarter, and the “World Travel Mart”, set to take place in the United Kingdom in the final quarter of next year.
“I’m planning to take operators to seek out new opportunities from these two events in 2016,” he said this week.Charoen said he was committed during his four-year term at the helm of the association to developing inbound business by sourcing new markets from global venues.
Many first-visit tourists still want to travel to Thailand, while established operators should have a chance to see new trends and adjust themselves to meet the demand, especially from Western markets and beyond, he explained. He also plans to work with experts from public organisations and a group of academics to set up a national tourism research and development centre, in order to develop the entire sector for the long term, and also enable it to cope better with unforeseen incidents.
Furthermore, the association will continue to enhance local people’s skills and improve workers’ competencies, which is a key element for Thai tourism development, he said.
Charoen added that ATTA would focus more on Asian markets, and especially Asean, in a bid to increase the number of intra-regional arrivals.
“ATTA will work with the Tourism Authority of Thailand and tourism associations in Southeast Asia to organise an ‘AEC+6 Total Tourism Connectivity’ project aimed at facilitating the exchange and transfer of tourists among member countries,” he said.
Apart from Asean bodies, tourism associations in China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and India are key targets for the project.
Meanwhile, in regard to the current air-travel safety issue facing the Kingdom, ATTA has expressed its serious concern to the government following the warning from the International Civil Aviation Organisation that Thai airlines were failing to meet the international standard.
It has strongly urged the government to restore the authorities’ confidence in Thailand’s aviation safety as soon as possible, in order to reclaim the confidence of tourists.
The government has lifted martial law, but now faces this serious problem, which needs to be resolved quickly, the association said.