Tourism businesses lauded for high standards
THE TOURISM Department awarded as many as 500 entities that met the qualifications under the Thailand Tourism Standard Awards programme in a ceremony recently presided over by Kobkarn Wattanavrangkul, minister of tourism and sports.
The department said the programme would strongly boost the attempt to standardise and upgrade the country’s tourism businesses and tourist attractions, which in turn would lead to growing confidence in the Thai tourism industry by travellers.
Wannasiri Morakul, director-general of the Tourism Department, said it had stepped forward to upgrade the standards of operation of tourist attractions and tourism-related products and services to gain greater confidence among visitors to Thailand, as tourism is considered a major tool to support sustainable development of the economy.
Presiding over the annual Thailand Tourism Standard Awards ceremony, Kobkarn awarded trophies and certificates to 500 tourism enterprises that passed evaluation criteria set by the Tourism Department. The honourees were from different sectors, including standard accommodations such as homestays, and standard tourism services such as hired boats, boat tours and elephant camps.
Wannasiri said her department had so far issued 52 standards covering all aspects of tourism, such as accommodation, services, tourist attractions, tourist activities, and tour agency and tourist guides.
“We want to make our standards better known among tourism businesses and we must encourage more tourism-related businesses to register for evaluation,” she said. “With the awards, entrepreneurs are authorised to use the standard [qualification] emblems in their marketing campaigns to demonstrate their service excellence.”
To continue to upgrade tourism standards in Thailand, tourism businesses and service providers must form a collaborative network to share knowledge among themselves so that they will meet the requirements of “Thailand 4.0” development strategy, the department says. This will be in line with the government’s aim to boost tourism revenues to Bt2.5 trillion next year.
“We would like to urge tourism-related businesses to be aware of the importance of tourism standards in order to cater to the expected larger tourism market in the future,” Wannasiri said. “Therefore, they must operate on a transparent, systematic, and assessment-friendly fashion.
“When every tourism entity in Thailand moves to operate on the same set of standards, the path to glory for prosperous Thailand will be within reach.”
